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Copyright,  1892, 
By  Little,  Brown,  and  Company. 


Jlitibersitg  ifrcss: 
John  Wilson  and  Son,  Cambridge. 


CONTENTS. 


Page 

Introduction vii 

The  South-Sea  House i 

Oxford  in  the  Vacation 14 

Christ's  Hospital  Five  and  Thirty  Years  ago  .  24 

The  Two  Races  of  Men 45 

New  Year's  Eve *    .    .    .    .  54 

Mrs.  Battle's  Opinions  on  Whist 65 

A  Chapter  on  Ears 77 

All  Fools'  Day 86 

A  Quaker's  Meeting 92 

The  Old  and  the  New  Schoolmaster     ....  100 

Valentine's  Day 114 

Imperfect  Sympathies 119 

Witches,  and  Other  Night-Fears 133 

My  Relations 144 

Mackery  End,  in  Hertfordshire 155 

Modern  Gallantry 163 

The  Old  Benchers  of  the  Inner  Temple   .    .    .  170 

Grace  before  Meat 188 


IVI103141 


vi  CONTENTS. 

Page 

My  First  Play 199 

Dream-Children  ;  a  Reverie 207 

Distant  Correspondents 214 

The  Praise  of  Chimney-Sweepers 224 

A  Complaint  of  the  Decay  of  Beggars  in  the 

Metropolis 236 

A  Dissertation  upon  Roast  Pig 248 

A  Bachelor's  Complaint  of  the  Behaviour  of 

Married  People 260 

On  Some  of  the  Old  Actors 272 

On   the  Artificial  Comedy  of  the  Last  Cen- 
tury      291 

On  the  Acting  of  Munden 304 


INTRODUCTION, 


/^"^HARLES  LAMB  really  came  into  this 
^^  world  of  man  under  the  name  of  Elia; 
as  a  "  son  of  memory,"  so  was  he  christened, 
and  by  it  he  is  known,  for  it  is  the  name,  not  of 
his  creature-life,  but  of  his  better  part.  His^ 
personality  finds  expression  in  it,  freed  from 
the  sad  or  mean  accidents  of  his  mortal  career; 
and  it  recalls  only  what  in  him  was  touched  with 
the  light  and  shadow  of  an  inconstant  genius 
or  penetrated  with  the  simplicity  of  the  heart, 
and  yet  leaves  room  for  that  eccentricity,  that 
strangeness  heightened  to  the  point  of  quaint- 
ness,  which  is  an  element  in  the  attractiveness 
of  character  not  less  than,  as  Bacon  declared, 
in  beautiful  things.  Elia  is  a  name  of  the  im-^ 
agination ;  but  it  was  borne  by  an  old  acquaint- 
ance, an  Italian  who  was  a  fellow-clerk  at  the 
South-Sea  House  when  Lamb  was  a  boy  there. 


Viii  INTRODUCTION. 

thirty  years  before  he  sat  down  to  write  these 
Essays ;  and,  as  a  piece  of  pleasantry,  he  bor- 
rowed his  friend's  true  face  to  mask  his  own  in. 
He  went,  he  tells  us,  to  see  the  Elia  of  flesh 
and  blood,  and  laugh  over  the  liberty  he  had 
taken,  but  found  the  Italian  dead  ;  and  the  in- 
cident —  the  playfulness  of  the  odd  plagiarism 
ending  unexpectedly  in  a  solemn  moment,  a 
pathetic  close  —  is  so  in  character  with  the 
moods  of  these  pages,  that  even  their  maker 
could  not  have  invented  better  what  life  gave 
into  his  hands.  The  name  had  devolved  upon 
him  now,  he  said ;  he  had,  as  it  were,  unknow- 
ingly adopted  a  shade,  and  it  was  to  go  about 
with  him  thenceforth,  and  watch  at  his  grave 
after  he  too  should  depart.  For  two  years  he 
used  the  ruse  of  this  ghost  of*  a  name,  but  the 
uncanniness  of  it  was  his  own  secret;  to  the 
reader  of  the  "  London  Magazine,"  in  which 
he  published,  Elia  was  —  what  it  is  to  us  —  a 
name  of  the  eternal  humourist  in  life's  various 
crowd. 

The  form  which  Lamb  chose  for  himself,  the 
familiar  essay  as  it  had  been  developed  in  Eng- 
land, was  as  well  fitted  to  him  as  his  natural 


INTRODUCTION.  ix 

voice.  He  had  begun  as  a  poet,  but  he  lacked 
the  condensation,  the  directness  and  singleness  of 
intellectual  aim,  the  power  of  control,  which  are 
essential  to  the  poet;  he  was  an  observer  of 
the  world  without,  a  rambler  in  all  things,  and 
tended  inevitably  to  that  dissipation  of  the  eye 
among  the  multitude  of  men  and  things,  which 
ends  in  prose ;  even  as  a  humourist  he  loses  him- 
self in  his  impressions,  and  becomes  reportorial. 
But  he  had  an  eye  for  oddities,  and  with  it  went 
the  saving  grace  that  he  loved  the  absurd  in  man. 
The  spirit  of  caricature  was  not  in  him.  He  lived 
in  a  nation  marked  by  freedom  of  caprice,  and 
in  its  chief  city ;  but  it  is  seldom  that  he  chooses 
his  subject  from  among  those  whose  eccentricity 
is  self-assertive ;  the  absurdities  that  amuse  him 
are  those  of  nature's  making,  —  "the  fool"  whom 
he  loves;  and  the  peculiarities  that  arrest  him 
are  oftenest  those  which  result  from  the  misfor- 
tunes, the  rubs  and  dents,  all  the  rude  buffeting 
of  life  leaving  its  marks  on  the  form  and  mind 
of  those  who  are  submitted  to  its  rule.  How  fre- 
quently his  characters  are  the  broken  "  hulks"  of 
the  voyage  !  in  what  author  is  old  age  so  dreary, 
or  the  boon  companion  so  shabby !    for  Lamb's 


X  INTRODUCTION. 

humour  seldom  ends  in  the  laughable,  but  is  a 
plea  for  toleration,  sympathy,  forgiveness,  —  the 
old  phrase  of  the  prayer-book,  miserable  sinners 
are  we  ally  but,  principally,  small  sinners  in  small 
things.  I  cannot  free  myself  from  the  feeling 
that,  as  a  humourist.  Lamb  is  the  father-confessor 
of  venial  offences,  tender  to  waifs  and  cripples, 
the  refuge  of  the  victims  of  mean  misery.  It  is 
as  if  the  Good  Samaritan  should  turn  humourist. 
Yet  he  leaves  an  impression  that  is  ill-rendered 
by  such  a  description,  because  he  blends  so 
many  strands  of  human  nature  with  this  main 
thread. 

The  charm  of  these  Essays  is  personal,  and  it 
is  made  a  mastering  one  by  the  autobiography 
they  contain.  Lamb  was  not  less  an  egotist 
than  a  humourist,  and  in  the  familiar  essay  ego- 
tism has  unimpeded  way.  He  discloses  his 
tastes  and  habits,  and  disguises  not  those  things 
in  which  he  differs  from  conventional  man; 
he  is  proud  of  them,  and  goes  his  own  pace. 
There  is  infinite  amusement  in  a  certain  kind  of 
self-gossip,  seen  to  its  perfection  in  Pepys ;  and 
though  Lamb's  likings  in  meat  and  drink  are 
not  to  be  confounded  with  things  of  the  Pepys- 


INTRODUCTION.  xi 

ian  order,  yet  the  tone  is  sometimes  not  to  be 
discriminated  from  such  '*  pure  idleness."  The 
sinister  reflection  of  how  much  social  hypocrisy 
saves  from,  of  what  concessions  of  individual 
preference  or  even  conviction  are  made  to  the 
company,  reacts  in  us  and  heightens  the  enjoy- 
ment when  an  egotist  stands  to  his  egotism  and 
is  unabashed  though  pilloried  in  men's  minds. 
Frankness  is  always  engaging,  and  Lamb  wins 
us  by  his  confidingness.  He  gives  more  than ' 
this  sense  of  intimacy;  he  does  really  surrender 
himself,  and  all  his  relatives  besides,  into  our 
hands.  At  the  time  he  had  the  grace  to  con- 
ceal, by  appearances,  the  characters  he  drew; 
but  the  veil  was  thin,  and  nothing  is  now  left  of 
it.  His  strong  domestic  feeling,  his  love  for  ^ 
the  things  of  home,  enhance  the  humanity  of  the 
portrayal,  and  each  picture  is  seen  beyond  the 
contrasting  foreground  of  "  the  lonely  hearth " 
where  he  sits  writing ;  "  the  old  familiar  faces  " 
are  illumined  there,  in  the  later  years,  with  as 
tender  a  melancholy  as  in  the  poem  of  his 
youth.  Scenes  from  his  own  life  make  up  nta 
small  portion  of  what  is  substantial  in  his  book;} 
and  the  humour  is  always  softened  by  the  at-' 


XU  INTRODUCTION. 

mosphere  of  mingled  affection  and  sentiment  in 
which  it  works.  His  confessions  of  childhood 
are  especially  touching.     No  one  has  revealed 

'  the  poignancy  of  children's  sufferings,  their 
helplessness,  their  solitariness,  their  hopeless- 
ness, the  physical  nearness  of  all  grief  at  that 
age,  with  a  pen  so  crying  out  shame.  But,  as  in 
his  description  of  middle  and  elderly  life  there 
is  a  predominant  strain  of  misery  and  triviality, 
a  never-absent  pathos,  so  in  what  he  draws  from 
childhood,  where  are  the  cheerfulness,  the  in- 
nocence, the  gayety,  the  wild  and  thoughtless 
happiness?  They  were  not  in  his  life.  Even 
his  child-angel  is  a  sorrowful  conception.  When 
he  was  "at  Christ's"  —  was  it  such  a  child's 
hell?  and  was  that  all  he  knew  of  childhood? 
One  cannot  help  such  reflections ;  and  they  un- 
derlie, in  truth,  the  melancholy  that  attended 
him  and  the  sentiment  that  sprang  up  in  him, 
both  of  which    preserve  these  Essays  equally 

.with  their  humour. 

Sentiment  stood  for  him,  perhaps,  in  the  place 
of  love  in  his  life.     The  romance,  which  now  is 

the  memory  of  "Alice  W ,"  certainly  was 

cherished,  in  the  sphere  of  sentiment,  by  him 


INTRODUCTION.  iiii 

life-long;  and  in  his  musings  in  imagination 
upon  what  might  have  been,  there  is  much  of 
that  mournful  fancy,  that  affection  for  things 
unrealized,  which  betray  heart-hunger;  even  in 
his  attachment  to  old  places  and  accustomed 
ways,  and  to  what  he  called  "  antiquity "  (of 
which  in  his  own  mind  he  and  his  belongings 
were  part  and  parcel),  there  is  something  of  the 
wandering  of  the  else-unsupported  vine.  His 
is  the  sentiment  of  a  melancholy  —  that  is,  a 
suppressed,  down-borne,  and  retarded  nature, 
cabined,  cribbed,  confined.  It  was  almost  his 
sole  good  fortune  that  literature  offered  him 
a  resource  from  the  deprivations  of  his  life, 
and  gave  him  freedom  of  thought  and  feeling 
in  the  ideal  world ;  there  he  found  objects  worth 
his  constancy,  and  being  gifted  with  sensibility 
and  discernment,  he  became  a  discoverer  in  "  the 
realms  of  gold,"  an  antiquarian  whose  prizes 
were  lyrics  and  sonnets  and  snatches  of  song, 

"  And  beauty  making  beautiful  old  rhyme ; " 

and  he  forsook  the  modern  days  to  delight  him- 
self with  the  curious  felicity  of  the  Arcadia  and 
Sir  Thomas  Browne,  with  single  great  scenes  of 


Xiv  INTRODUCTION. 

the  Elizabethans,  and  with  the  breath  of  Marvell's 
garden.  He  escaped  into  the  golden  age,  into 
"  antiquity,"  —  for  he  meant  by  that  favourite 
phrase  little  older  than  Sackville. 

It  is  easy  to  overestimate  the  service  of  Lamb 
and  his  friends  in  the  revival  of  the  older 
English  literature.  It  was  not  begun  by  them. 
Throughout  the  eighteenth  century  the  rill  of 
Parnassus  had  been  flowing,  and  now  the  stream 
had  become  broad.  Lamb's  group  was  borne 
on  a  deeper  common  current.  But  he,  with 
Coleridge,  Hazlitt,  Hunt,  and  others  of  the  time 
were  agents  in  the  diffusion  of  the  new  taste, 
and  their  critical  appreciation  and  authority 
gave  them  a  place  as  supporters  of  the  inno- 
vation, sufficient  to  define  a  historical  moment. 
Lamb  is  not  to  be  regarded  as  the  author  of  the 
revival  of  which  he  was  rather  a  part.  He  felt 
.  it  more  than  he  directed  it.  Leadership  was 
not  in  his  bundle  of  qualities.  He  responded, 
however,  to  the  influences  of  the  re-discovered 
literature  with  marvellously  perfect  sympathy. 
The  more  recondite  and  esoteric  portions  of  it 
were  most  to  his  taste.  The  humourist  in  him 
answered  the  most  exigent  demands  of  the  oc- 


INTRODUCTION.  xv 

casion ;  and  oddities  of  language  and  thought, 
conceits,  quaintnesses,  even  conscious  affecta- 
tions, attracted  him,  just  as  the  same  qualities 
in  living  human  nature  called  forth  his  motley- 
seeking  wits.  His  originality,  or  native  eccen- 
tricity, felt  something  kindred  to  itself  in  the  old 
writers;  their  queernesses,  worn  like  nature, 
kept  his  own  in  countenance ;  their  affectations 
were  a  model  on  which  his  innate  whimsicality 
could  frame  itself.  And,  possibly,  more  than  all 
(yet  excepting  the  pure  charm  of  poetry),  their 
sentiment,  lingering  on  from  days  of  chivalry 
and  the  allegorical  in  literature,  fed  a  fundamen- 
tal need  of  the  emotional  nature  in  such  a  life 
as  Lamb's,  perforce,  was.  He  became  an  imi- 
tator of  antiquated  style,  a  mannerist  after  his 
favourites,  given  to  artifice  and  fantasy  as  a  lit- 
erary method,  and  yet  he  remained  himself. 
The  disease  of  language  does  not  penetrate  to 
the  thought. 

\Thus  there  were  mingled  in  Lamb  literary 
artifice  with  truth  to  nature,  egotism  with  hu- 
manity, humour  with  sentiment,  —  both  dashed 
by  something  melancholy;  and  one  spark  of 
genius,  fusing  this  blend,  has  made  the  book  of 


xvi  INTRODUCTION. 

Elia  a  treasure  to  many.  It  is  not  a  great  book, 
but  it  is  uncommonly  interesting.  It  is  human 
^from  cover  to  cover.  The  subjects  may  be 
trivial,  the  company  "  low,"  the  incidents  farci- 
cal ;  but  of  such  is  the  kingdom  of  this  world,  — 
at  least  it  was  so  in  London  then}^  Lamb  was  a 
good  observer ;  and,  as  in  the  sketches  of  the  ear- 
lier essayists  of  Queen  Anne  literary  historians 
point  out  the  beginnings  of  the  social  novel  of 
the  next  generation  in  that  century,  may  not  one 
find  a  foregleam  of  Dickens  in  these  pages,  of 
the  lot  of  children,  and  the  look  of  lives  grown 
threadbare,  and  the  virtues  hidden  in  common- 
place people?  There  is,  no  doubt,  the  trace  of 
Smollett;  but  in  addition  is  there  not  the  spirit 
of  humanity  which,  after  Scott's  pageant  passed, 
took  possession  of  our  fiction  and  subdued  it  to 
democracy?  The  exaggeration,  both  of  humour 
and  of  sentiment,  in  Dickens,  the  master  of  the 
craft,  Lamb  was  free  from;  but  the  curious 
tracer  of  literary  moods  in  the  century  would 
hardly  hesitate  to  include  Lamb  in  the  succes- 
sion. On  other  sides  Lamb  faced  the  past ;  but 
here  was  his  one  window  on  the  times  he  lived 
in,  or  else  he  must  be  set  down  as  one  of  those 


INTRODUCTION.  XVll 

"sports"  of  the  intellect  which  have  no  relation 
to  their  generation.  In  description  and  in 
character-drawing  he  was,  of  course,  as  simply- 
personal  as  in  his  criticism.  He  might  have 
smiled  or  scoffed  at  the  idea  that  he  was  a  fore- 
runner in  fiction  as  that  he  was  a  leader  in  the  t 
romantic  movement.  He  cared  nought  for  such  / 
things,  as  little  as  for  science  or  music.  He 
worked  as  an  individual  only,  and  told  his  recol- 
lections or  described  his  friends  and  acquaint- 
ances just  as  he  read  his  folios,  because  he 
pleased  himself  in  doing  it.  But  it  is  hard  for 
a  writer,  however  idiosyncratic,  not  to  be  a  link 
between  the  days.  The  taste  that  classes  him, 
in  his  work  as  a  humourist,  is  his  love  of  Ho- 
garth, whom  he  appreciated  more  intelligently 
and  fully,  perhaps,  than  any  one  between  Field- 
ing and  Thackeray.  When  it  is  objected  that 
the  quality  of  ordinary  life  as  he  presents  it  is 
"  seaminess,"  we  should  recall  in  what  company 
he  exhibits  it ;  and  if  his  humour  does  not  al- 
ways hide  the  deformity  and  avoid  the  pain  of 
the  spectacle,  our  generation  is  probably  more 
acutely  aware  of  these  things. 

The  human  interest  in  the  Essays,  however,  is 


/ 


XVlll  INTRODUCTION. 

not  confined  to  what  Lamb  saw  of  the  absurd 
and  grotesque,  the  cruel  and  pathetic,  in  other 
lives.     He  is  himself  his  best  character,  and  best 
rawn.     He  was  extraordinarily  self-conscious, 
^  and  the  pages  yield  little  that  he  did  not  mean 
to  be  told.     One  must  go  to  the  silent  part  of 
his  biography  to  obtain  that  sobering  correction 
of  his  whimsies  and  failings,  that  knowledge  of 
his  manliness  in  meeting  the  necessities  of  his 
situation,  that  sense  of  honesty,  industry,   and 
generosity,  which  he  kept  out  of  his  books.    The 
side  that  most  men  turn  to  the  world  he  con- 
cealed, and  he  showed  that  which  is  commonly 
kept  secret.     He  had  been  a  poet  in  youth,  and 
he  never  lost  the  habit  of  wearing  his  heart  upon 
his  sleeve.     He  was  never  as  a  poet  to  get  be- 
yond sentiment,  which  in  a  romantic  age  is  but 
a  little  way ;   and  in  degenerating  into  prose  (as 
he  thought  it)  he  gave  no  other  sign  of  poetic 
endowment  than  this  of  sentiment  that  he  could 
not  surrender;  but  to  what  a  length  he  carried  it 
without  exceeding  the  bounds  of  true  feeling! 
Sentiment,  like  humour,  needs  a  delicate  craft; 
but  he,  though  not  so  penetrating,  was  as  sure 
of  hand  as  Burns.     Even  under  the  temptation 


INTRODUCTION.  xix 

of  an  antique  style,  he  does  not  err :  with  affec- 
tation commanding  every  turn  and  cadence,  his 
feeling  goes  true;  and  the  heart  answers  to  it 
through  all  the  gamut,  playful,  regretful,  melan- 
choly, wailing.  The  word  is  not  too  strong ;  turn 
to  "  The  Dream-Children,"  — it  is  the  tragedy  of  / 
sentiment.  Other  moods  too  he  revealed,  ana 
especially  the  melancholy  ground  of  his  nature. 
He  disclaimed  the  fierce  earnestness,  the  bitter 
experience,  the  hopeless  despondency  of  **  The 
Confessions  of  a  Drunkard,"  nor  should  one 
charge  him  with  the  burden  of  so  dark  a  tale ; 
but  that  there  are  elements  of  autobiography  in 
it,  of  things  foreseen  if  not  experienced,  —  a 
vision  of  the  road  to  its  end,  —  is,  unhappily, 
too  plain  a  matter.  I  refer  to  it,  not  to  reproach 
or  extenuate,  but  as  one  sign  of  several  which 
indicate  that,  like  all  natures  lacking  in  the  prin- 
ciple of  reason  and  control.  Lamb  was  sub- 
ject to  spells  of  penitence,  of  bewildered  appeal, 
which  were  at  the  roots  of  that  insistent  melan-  \ 
choly,  and  help  to  explain  why,  when  it  comes  / 
upon  the  page,  it  is  never  imaginative,  but 
always  real. 

Yet  Lamb,  though  always,  I  think,  a  pathetic 


XX  INTRODUCTION. 

figure  in  men's  memories,  does  not  in  these  Es- 
says give  such  an  impression  except  at  moments, 
just  as  he  affects  us  only  at  intervals  with  the 
dreariness  of  the  human  life  he  describes.  One 
Reason  is  that  his  personality  is  diffused  in  vary- 
ing essays,  and  is  given  completely  in  none ;  and 
besides,  his  reputation  as  a  wit,  and  what  we 
know  of  his  suppers,  and  the  whole  social  side 
of  the  man,  blend  with  the  mode  of  address,  the 
familiarity,  the  discursive  manner,  the  frequent 
whim,  the  anecdotage,  the  multifarious  interest 
of  the  whole.  The  Essays  are  pleasant  to  read, 
and  winning ;  the  predominant,  and  at  first  almost 
engrossing  impression  is  of  the  companionable- 
ness  of  the  writer,  —  he  is  excellent  company. 
The  style,  too,  is  fitted  to  secure  its  effects.  We 
know  that  he  wrote  them  with  great  care,  and 
sometimes  with  difficulty;  and  if  the  heart  of 
Lamb  is  always  close  at  hand  in  the  page,  his 
mind  is  there  too.  In  some  of  the  critical  parts 
especially,  there  is  that  kind  of  reflection  that 
gives  substance  to  a  book  otherwise  meant  simply 
for  entertainment.  The  dramatic  sketches  also 
lighten  the  whole  effect  by  their  apparent  imper- 
sonality.   It  is  only  when  the  more  famous  papers 


INTRODUCTION.  xxi 

are  thought  of  by  themselves,  and  those  most 
autobiographical  in  matter,  that  Lamb's  humour 
and  sentiment,  his  egotism  and  humanity,  his 
literary  artifice  in  all,  and  the  narrow  limits 
within  which  these  had  their  field,  become  so 
prominent  as  to  seem  to  constitute  the  book 
as  well  as  the  man.  These  qualities  have  estab- 
lished the  Essays  in  literature,  and  their  author, 
Elia,  in  the  affections  of  kind  hearts. 


GEORGE   E.  WOODBERRY. 


Beverly,  Mass., 

October,  1892- 


THE  SOUTH-SEA  HOUSE. 


Reader,  in  thy  passage  from  the  Bank  —  where 
thou  hast  been  receiving  thy  half-yearly  dividends 
(supposing  thou  art  a  lean  annuitant  like  myself)  — 
to  the  Flower  Pot,  to  secure  a  place  for  Dalston,  or 
Shacklewell,  or  some  other  thy  suburban  retreat 
northerly,  —  didst  thou  never  observe  a  melan- 
choly looking,  handsome,  brick  and  stone  edifice,  to 
the  left  —  where  Threadneedle-street  abuts  upon 
Bishopsgate  ?  I  dare  say  thou  hast  often  admired  its 
magnpficent  portals  ever  gaping  wide,  and  disclosing 
to  view  a  grave  court,  with  cloisters,  and  pillars,  with 
few  or  no  traces  of  goers-in  or  comers-out  —  a  deso- 
lation something  like  Balclutha's.* 

This  was  once  a  house  of  trade,  —  a  centre  of  busy 
interests.  The  throng  of  merchants  was  here  —  the 
quick  pulse  of  gain  —  and  here  some  forms  of  busi- 
ness are  still  kept  up,  though  the  soul  be  long  since 
fled.     Here  are  still  to  be  seen  stately  porticos ;  im- 

*  I  passed  by  the  walls  of  Balclutha,  and  they  were  deso- 
late.—  OSSIAN. 

I 


2  THE  SOUTH-SEA  HOUSE. 

posing  Staircases  j  offices  roomy  as  the  state  apart- 
ments in  palaces  —  deserted,  or  thinly  peopled  with 
a  few  St>aggliQg  clerks;  the  still  more  sacred  inte- 
riors of  court  and  committee  rooms,  with  venerable 
faces  of  beadles,  door-keepers  —  directors  seated  in 
form  on  solemn  days  (to  proclaim  a  dead  dividend,) 
at  long  worm-eaten  tables,  that  have  been  mahogany, 
with  tarnished  gilt-leather  coverings,  supporting 
massy  silver  inkstands  long  since  dry;  —  the  oaken 
wainscots  hung  with  pictures  of  deceased  governors 
and  sub-governors,  of  queen  Anne,  and  the  two 
first  monarchs  of  the  Brunswick  dynasty;  —  huge 
charts,  which  subsequent  discoveries  have  anti- 
quated ;  —  dusty  maps  of  Mexico,  dim  as  dreams,  — 
and  soundings  of  the  Bay  of  Panama !  —  The  long 
passages  hung  with  buckets,  appended,  in  idle  row, 
to  walls,  whose  substance  might  defy  any,  short  of 
the  last,  conflagration :  —  with  vast  ranges  of  cellar- 
age under  all,  where  dollars  and  pieces  of  eight 
once  lay,  an  "unsunned  heap,"  for  Mammon  to 
have  solaced  his  solitary  heart  withal,  —  long  since 
dissipated,  or  scattered  into  air  at  the  blast  of  the 

breaking  of  that  famous  Bubble. 

Such  is  the  South  Sea-House.  At  least,  such  it 
was  forty  years  ago,  when  I  knew  it,  —  a  magnificent 
relic  !  What  alterations  may  have  been  made  in  it 
since,  I  have  had  no  opportunities  of  verifpng. 
Time,  I  take  for  granted,  has  not  freshen«d  it.     No 


THE  SOUTH-SEA  HOUSE.  3 

wind  has  resuscitated  the  face  of  the  sleeping  waters. 
A  thicker  crust  by  this  time  stagnates  upon  it.  The 
moths,  that  were  then  battening  upon  its  obsolete 
ledgers  and  day-books,  have  rested  from  their  dep- 
redations, but  other  light  generations  have  suc- 
ceeded, making  fine  fretwork  among  their  single 
and  double  entries.  Layers  of  dust  have  accumu- 
lated (a  superfoetation  of  dirt !  )  upon  the  old  layers, 
that  seldom  used  to  be  disturbed,  save  by  some 
curious  finger,  now  and  theri,  inquisitive  to  explore 
the  mode  of  book-keeping  in  Queen  Arme's  reign; 
or,  with  less  hallowed  curiosity,  seeking  to  unveil 
some  of  the  mysteries  of  that  tremendous  hoax, 
whose  extent  the  petty  peculators  of  our  day  look 
back  upon  with  the  same  expression  of  incredulous 
admiration,  and  hopeless  ambition  of  rivalry,  as  would 
become  the  puny  face  of  modem  conspiracy  con- 
templating the  Titan  size  of  Vaux's  superhuman  plot. 

Peace  to  the  manes  of  the  Bubble  !  Silence  and 
destitution  are  upon  thy  walls,  proud  house,  for  a 
memorial ! 

Situated  as  thou  art,  in  the  very  heart  of  stirring 
and  living  commerce,  —  amid  the  fret  and  fever  of 
speculation  —  with  the  Bank,  and  the  'Change,  and 
the  India-house  about  thee,  in  the  hey-day  of  present 
prosperity,  with  their  important  faces,  as  it  were,  in- 
sulting thee,  their  poor  neighbour  out  of  business  — 
to  the  idle  and  merely  contemplative,  —  to  such  as 


4  THE  SOUTH-SEA  HOUSE. 

me,  old  house  !  there  is  a  charm  in  thy  quiet :  —  a 
cessation  —  a  coolness  from  business  —  an  indolence 
almost  cloistral  —  which  is  delightful !  With  what 
reverence  have  I  paced  thy  great  bare  rooms  and 
courts  at  eventide  !  They  spoke  of  the  past :  —  the 
shade  of  some  dead  accountant,  with  visionary  pen 
in  ear,  would  flit  by  me,  stiff  as  in  life.  Living 
accounts  and  accountants  puzzle  me.  I  have  no 
skill  in  figuring.  But  thy  great  dead  tomes,  which 
scarce  three  degenerate  clerks  of  the  present  day 
could  lift  from  their  enshrining  shelves  —  with  their 
old  fantastic  flourishes,  and  decorative  rubric  inter- 
lacings —  their  sums  in  triple  columniations,  set 
down  with  formal  superfluity  of  cyphers  —  with  pious 
sentences  at  the  beginning,  without  which  our  re- 
ligious ancestors  never  ventured  to  open  a  book  of 
business,  or  bill  of  lading  —  the  costly  vellum  covers 
of  some  of  them  almost  persuading  us  that  we  are 
got  into  some  better  library ,  —  are  very  agreeable 
and  edifying  spectacles.  I  can  look  upon  these  de- 
funct dragons  with  complacency.  Thy  heavy  odd- 
shaped  ivory-handled  penknives  (our  ancestors  had 
every  thing  on  a  larger  scale  than  we  have  hearts 
for)  are  as  good  as  any  thing  from  Herculaneum. 
The  pounce-boxes  of  our  days  have  gone  retrograde. 
The  very  clerks  which  I  remember  in  the  South 
Sea-House  —  I  speak  of  forty  years  back  —  had  an 
air  very   different  from   those   in   the  public  offices 


THE  SOUTH-SEA  HOUSE.  5 

that  I  have  had  to  do  with  since.  They  partook  of 
the  genius  of  the  place  ! 

They  were  mostly  (for  the  establishment  did  not 
admit  of  superfluous  salaries)  bachelors.  Generally 
(for  they  had  not  much  to  do)  persons  of  a  curious 
and  speculative  turn  of  mind.  Old-fashioned,  for 
a  reason  mentioned  before.  Humorists,  for  they 
were  of  all  descriptions;  and,  not  having  been 
brought  together  in  early  life  (which  has  a  tendency 
to  assimilate  the  members  of  corporate  bodies  to 
each  other),  but,  for  the  most  part,  placed  in  this 
house  in  ripe  or  middle  age,  they  necessarily  carried 
into  it  their  separate  habits  and  oddities,  unqualified, 
if  I  may  so  speak,  as  into  a  common  stock.  Hence 
they  formed  a  sort  of  Noah's  ark.  Odd  fishes.  A 
lay-monastery.  Domestic  retainers  in  a  great  house, 
kept  more  for  show  than  use.  Yet  pleasant  fel- 
lows, full  of  chat  —  and  not  a  few  among  them  had 
arrived  at  considerable  proficiency  on  the  German 
flute. 

The  cashier  at  that  time  was  one  Evans,  a  Cam- 
bro-Briton.  He  had  something  of  the  choleric 
complexion  of  his  countrymen  stamped  on  his 
visage,  but  was  a  worthy  sensible  man  at  bottom. 
He  wore  his  hair,  to  the  last,  powdered  and  frizzed 
out,  in  the  fashion  which  I  remember  to  have  seen 
in  caricatures  of  what  were  termed,  in  my  young 
days,  Maccaronies.     He  was  the  last  of  that  race  of 


6  THE   SOUTH-SEA  HOUSE. 

beaux.  Melancholy  as  a  gib-cat  over  his  counter 
all  the  forenoon,  I  think  I  see  him,  making  up  his 
cash  (as  they  call  it)  with  tremulous  fingers,  as  if  he 
feared  every  one  about  him  was  a  defaulter;  in  his 
hypochondry  ready  to  imagine  himself  one ;  haunted, 
at  least,  with  the  idea  of  the  possibility  of  his  be- 
coming one  :  his  tristful  visage  clearing  up  a  little 
over  his  roast  neck  of  veal  at  Anderton's  at  two 
(where  his  picture  still  hangs,  taken  a  little  before 
his  death  by  desire  of  the  master  of  the  coffee-house, 
which  he  had  frequented  for  the  last  five-and-twenty 
years),  but  not  attaining  the  meridian  of  its  anima- 
tion till  evening  brought  on  the  hour  of  tea  and 
visiting.  The  simultaneous  sound  of  his  well-known 
rap  at  the  door  with  the  stroke  of  the  clock  an- 
nouncing six,  was  a  topic  of  never-failing  mirth  in 
the  families  which  this  dear  old  bachelor  gladdened 
with  his  presence.  Then  was  his  forte,  his  glorified 
hour  !  How  would  he  chirp,  and  expand,  over  a  muf- 
fin !  How  would  he  dilate  into  secret  history  !  His 
countryman.  Pennant  himself,  in  particular,  could  not 
be  more  eloquent  than  he  in  relation  to  old  and  new 
London  —  the  site  of  old  theatres,  churches,  streets 
gone  to  decay  —  where  Rosomond's  pond  stood  —  the 
Mulberry-gardens  —  and  the  Conduit  in  Cheap  — 
with  many  a  pleasant  anecdote,  derived  from  pater- 
nal tradition,  of  those  grotesque  figures  which  Ho- 
garth has  immortalized   in  his   picture  of  Noon, — 


THE  SOUTH-SEA  HOUSK  7 

the  worthy  descendants  of  those  heroic  confessors, 
who,  flying  to  this  country,  from  the  wrath  of 
Louis  the  Fourteenth  and  his  dragoons,  kept  alive 
the  flame  of  pure  reHgion  in  the  sheltering  obscuri- 
ties of  Hog- Lane,  and  the  vicinity  of  the  Seven 
Dials ! 

Deputy,  under  Evans,  was  Thomas  Tame.  He 
had  the  air  and  stoop  of  a  nobleman.  You  would 
have  taken  him  for  one,  had  you  met  him  in  one  of 
the  passages  leading  to  Westminster-hall.  By  stoop, 
I  mean  that  gentle  bending  of  the  body  forwards, 
which,  in  great  men,  must  be  supposed  to  be  the 
effect  of  an  habitual  condescending  attention  to  the 
applications  of  their  inferiors.  While  he  held  you 
in  converse,  you  felt  strained  to  the  height  in  the 
colloquy.  The  conference  over,  you  were  at  leisure 
to  smile  at  the  comparative  insignificance  of  the  pre- 
tensions which  had  just  awed  you.  His  intellect 
was  of  the  shallowest  order.  It  did  not  reach  to  a 
saw  or  a  proverb.  His  mind  was  in  its  original 
state  of  white  paper.  A  sucking  babe  might  have 
posed  him.  What  was  it  then  ?  Was  he  rich  ?  Alas, 
no !  Thomas  Tame  was  very  poor.  Both  he  and 
his  wife  looked  outwardly  gentlefolks,  when  I  fear 
all  was  not  well  at  all  times  within.  She  had  a  neat 
meagre  person,  which  it  was  evident  she  had  not 
sinned  in  over-pampering;  but  in  its  veins  was 
noble  blood.     She  traced  her  descent,  by  some  laby* 


8  THE  SOUTH-SEA  HOUSE. 

rinth  of  relationship,  which  I  never  thoroughly  un- 
derstood, —  much  less  can  explain  with  any  heraldic 
certainty  at  this  time  of  day,  —  to  the  illustrious,  but 
unfortunate  house  of  Derwentwater.  This  was  the 
secret  of  Thomas's  stoop.  This  was  the  thought  — 
the  sentiment  —  the  bright  solitary  star  of  your  lives, 
—  ye  mild  and  happy  pair,  —  which  cheered  you  in 
the  night  of  intellect,  and  in  the  obscurity  of  your 
station  !  This  was  to  you  instead  of  riches,  instead 
of  rank,  instead  of  glittering  attainments:  and  it 
was  worth  them  all  together.  You  insulted  none 
with  itj  but,  while  you  wore  it  as  a  piece  of  de- 
fensive armour  only,  no  insult  likewise  could  reach 
you  through  it.     Decus  et  solamen. 

Of  quite  another  stamp  was  the  then  accountant, 
John  Tipp.  He  neither  pretended  to  high  blood, 
nor  in  good  truth  cared  one  fig  about  the  matter. 
He  "thought  an  accountant  the  greatest  character 
in  the  world,  and  himself  the  greatest  accountant  in 
it."  Yet  John  was  not  without  his  hobby.  The 
fiddle  relieved  his  vacant  hours.  He  sang,  cer- 
tainly, with  other  notes  than  to  the  Orphean  lyre. 
He  did,  indeed,  scream  and  scrape  most  abominably. 
His  fine  suite  of  official  rooms  in  Threadneedle- 
street,  which,  without  any  thing  very  substantial 
appended  to  them,  were  enough  to  enlarge  a  man's 
notions  of  himself  that  lived  in  them,  (I  know  not 
who  is  the  occupier  of  them  now)  resounded  fort- 


THE  SOUTH-SEA  HOUSE.  9 

nightly  to  the  notes  of  a  concert  of  "  sweet  breasts," 
as  our  ancestors  would  have  called  them,  culled 
from  club-rooms  and  orchestras  —  chorus  singers  — 
first  and  second  violoncellos  —  double  basses  —  and 
clarionets  —  who  ate  his  cold  mutton,  and  drank  his 
punchj  and  praised  his  ear.  He  sate  like  Lord 
Midas  among  them.  But  at  the  desk  Tipp  was 
quite  another  sort  of  creature.  Thence  all  ideas, 
that  were  purely  ornamental,  were  banished.  You 
could  not  speak  of  any  thing  romantic  without  re- 
buke. Politics  were  excluded.  A  newspaper  was 
thought  too  refined  and  abstracted.  The  whole 
duty  of  man  consisted  in  writing  off  dividend  war- 
rants. The  striking  of  the  annual  balance  in  the 
company's  books  (which,  perhaps,  differed  from  the 
balance  of  last  year  in  the  sum  of  25/.  i^.  6d.)  occu- 
pied his  days  and  nights  for  a  month  previous.  Not 
that  Tipp  was  blind  to  the  deadness  of  things  (as 
they  call  them  in  the  city)  in  his  beloved  house, 
or  did  not  sigh  for  a  return  of  the  old  stirring  days 
when  South  Sea  hopes  were  young —  (he  was  indeed 
equal  to  the  wielding  of  any  the  most  intricate  ac- 
counts of  the  most  flourishing  company  in  these  or 
those  days)  :  —  but  to  a  genuine  accountant  the  dif- 
ference of  proceeds  is  as  nothing.  The  fractional 
farthing  is  as  dear  to  his  heart  as  the  thousands 
which  stand  before  it.  He  is  the  true  actor,  who, 
whether  his  part  be  a  prince  or  a  peasant,  must  act 


lO  THE   SOUTH-SEA  HOUSE. 

it  with  like  intensity.  With  Tipp  form  was  every 
thing.  His  Hfe  was  formal.  His  actions  seemed 
ruled  with  a  ruler.  His  pen  was  not  less  erring 
than  his  heart.  He  made  the  best  executor  in  the 
world :  he  was  plagued  with  incessant  executorships 
accordingly,  which  excited  his  spleen  and  soothed 
his  vanity  in  equal  ratios.  He  would  swear  (for 
Tipp  swore)  at  the  little  orphans,  whose  rights  he 
would  guard  with  a  tenacity  like  the  grasp  of  the 
dying  hand,  that  commended  their  interests  to  his 
protection.  With  all  this  there  was  about  him  a 
sort  of  timidity  —  (his  few  enemies  used  to  give  it  a 
worse  name)  —  a  something  which,  in  reverence  to 
the  dead,  we  will  place,  if  you  please,  a  little  on  this 
side  of  the  heroic.  Nature  certainly  had  been  pleased 
to  endow  John  Tipp  with  a  sufficient  measure  of 
the  principle  of  self-preservation.  There  is  a  cow- 
ardice which  we  do  not  despise,  because  it  has  no- 
thing base  or  treacherous  in  its  elements ;  it  betrays 
itself,  not  you ;  it  is  mere  temperament ;  the  absence 
of  the  romantic  and  the  enterprising ;  it  sees  a  lion 
in  the  way,  and  will  not,  with  Fortinbras,  "greatly 
find  quarrel  in  a  straw,"  when  some  supposed  hon- 
our is  at  stake.  Tipp  never  mounted  the  box  of 
a  stage-coach  in  his  life ;  or  leaned  against  the  rails 
of  a  balcony ;  or  walked  upon  the  ridge  of  a  parapet ; 
or  looked  down  a  precipice;  or  let  oif  a  gun;  or 
went   upon   a   water-party;    or   would    willingly    let 


THE   SOUTH-SEA   HOUSE.  II 

you  go  if  he  could  have  helped  it :  neither  was  it 
recorded  of  him,  that  for  lucre,  or  for  intimidation, 
he  ever  forsook  friend  or  principle. 

Whom  next  shall  we  summon  from  the  dusty 
dead,  in  whom  common  qualities  become  uncommon? 
Can  I  forget  thee,  Henry  Man,  the  wit,  the  polished 
man  of  letters,  the  author,  of  the  South  Sea  House? 
who  never  enteredst  thy  office  in  a  morning,  or  quit- 
tedst  it  in  mid-day  —  (what  didst  thou  in  an  office  ?) 

—  without  some  quirk  that  left  a  sting  !  .  Thy  gibes 
and  thy  jokes  are  now  extinct,  or  survive  but  in  two 
forgotten  volumes,  which  I  had  the  good  fortune  to 
rescue  from  a  stall  in  Barbican,  not  three  days  ago, 
and  found  thee  terse,  fresh,  epigrammatic,  as  alive. 
Thy  wit  is  a  little  gone  by  in  these  fastidious  days 

—  thy  topics  are  staled  by  the  "  new-born  gauds " 
of  the  time  :  —  but  great  thou  used  to  be  in  Public 
Ledgers,  and  in  Chronicles,  upon  Chatham,  and 
Shelburne,  and  Rockingham,  and  Howe,  and  Bur- 
goyne,  and  Clinton,  and  the  war  which  ended  in  the 
tearing  from  Great  Britain  her  rebellious  colonies, — 
and  Keppel,  and  Wilkes,  and  Sawbridge,  and  Bull, 
and  Dunning,  and  Pratt,  and  Richmond,  —  and  such 
small  politics. 

A  little  less  facetious,  and  a  great  deal  more  ob- 
streperous, was  fine  rattling,  rattleheaded  Plumer. 
He  was  descended,  — not  in  a  right  line,  reader,  (for 
his  lineal  pretensions,  like   his  personal,  favoured  a 


12  THE  SOUTH-SEA  HOUSE. 

little  of  the  sinister  bend)  from  the  Plumers  of  Hert- 
fordshire. So  tradition  gave  him  out;  and  certain 
family  features  not  a  little  sanctioned  the  opinion. 
Certainly  old  Walter  Plumer  (his  reputed  author) 
had  been  a  rake  in  his  days,  and  visited  much  in 
Italy,  and  had  seen  the  world.  He  was  uncle,  bach- 
elor-uncle, to  the  fine  old  whig  still  living,  who 
has  represented  the  county  in  so  many  successive 
parliaments,  and  has  a  fine  old  mansion  near  Ware. 
Walter  flourished  in  George  the  Second's  days,  and 
was  the  same  who  was  summoned  before  the  House 
of  Commons  about  a  business  of  franks,  with  the 
old  Duchess  of  Marlborough.  You  may  read  of  it 
in  Johnson's  Life  of  Cave.  Cave  came  off  cleverly 
in  that  business.  It  is  certain  our  Plumer  did  no- 
thing to  discountenance  the  rumor.  He  rather 
seemed  pleased  whenever  it  was,  with  all  gentle- 
ness, insinuated.  But,  besides  his  family  preten- 
sions, Plumer  was  an  engaging  fellow,  and  sang  glo- 
riously.  

Not  so  sweetly  sang  Plumer  as  thou  sangest,  mild, 

child-like,  pastoral  M ;  a  flute's  breathing   less 

divinely  whispering  than  thy  Arcadian  melodies, 
when,  in  tones  worthy  of  Arden,  thou  didst  chant 
that  song  sung  by  Amiens  to  the  banished  Duke, 
who  proclaims  the  winter  wind  more  lenient  than 
for  a  man  to  be  ungrateful.  Thy  sire  was  old 
surly  M ,  the  unapproachable   churchwarden   ot 


THE  SOUTH-SEA  HOUSE.  13 

Bishopsgate.  He  knew  not  what  he  did,  when  he 
begat  thee,  like  spring,  gentle  offspring  of  bluster- 
ing winter  :  —  only  unfortunate  in  thy  ending,  which 
should  have  been  mild,  conciliatory,  swan-like. 

Much  remains  to  sing.  Many  fantastic  shapes 
rise  up,  but  they  must  be  mine  in  private  :  —  already 
I  have  fooled  the  reader  to  the  top  of  his  bent ;  — 
else  could  I  omit  that  strange  creature  Woollett, 
who  existed  in  trying  the  question,  and  bought  liti- 
gations ?  —  and  still  stranger,  inimitable,  solemn 
Hepworth,  from  whose  gravity  Newton  might  have 
deduced  the  law  of  gravitation.  How  profoundly 
would  he  nib  a  pen  —  with  what  deliberation  would 
he  wet  a  wafer ! 

But  it  is  time  to  close  —  night's  wheels  are  rattling 
fast  over  me  —  it  is  proper  to  have  done  with  this 
solemn  mockery. 

Reader,  what  if  I  have  been  playing  with  thee 
all  this  while  —  peradventure  the  very  names ^  which 
I  have  summoned  up  before  thee,  are  fantastic  — 
insubstantial  —  like  Henry  Pimpernel,  and  old  John 
Naps  of  Greece  : 

Be  satisfied  that  something  answering  to  them  has 
had  a  being.     Their  importance  is  from  the  past. 


OXFORD  IN  THE  VACATION. 


Casting  a  preparatory  glance  at  the  bottom  of  this 
article  —  as  the  wary  connoisseur  in  prints,  with 
cursory  eye  (which,  while  it  reads,  seems  as  though 
it  read  not,)  never  fails  to  consult  the  quis  sculpsit 
in  the  corner,  before  he  pronounces  some  rare  piece 

to  be  a  Vivares,  or  a  WooUet methinks  I  hear 

you  exclaim,  Reader,  Who  is  Elia  ? 

Because  in  my  last  I  tried  to  divert  thee  with 
some  half-forgotten  humours  of  some  old  clerks  de- 
funct, in  an  old  house  of  business,  long  since  gone 
to  decay,  doubtless  you  have  already  set  me  down 

in  your  mind  as  one  of  the  self-same  college a 

votary  of  the  desk  —  a  notched  and  cropt  scrivener 
—  one  that  sucks  his  sustenance,  as  certain  sick  peo- 
ple are  said  to  do,  through  a  quill. 

Well,  I  do  agnize  something  of  the  sort.  I  con- 
fess that  it  is  my  humour,  my  fancy — in  the  fore- 
part of  the  day,  when  the  mind  of  your  man  of  letters 
requires  some  relaxation  —  (and  none  better  than 
such  as  at  first  sight  seems  most  abhorrent  from  his 


OXFORD   IN  THE  VACATION.  15 

beloved  studies)  —  to  while  away  some  good  hours 
of  my  time  in  the  contemplation  of  indigos,  cottons, 
raw  silks,  piece-goods,  flowered  or  otherwise.  In 
the  first  place  *  ****** 
and  then  it  sends  you  home  with  such  increased 
appetite  to  your  books  ***** 
not  to  say,  that  your  outside  sheets,  and  waste  wrap- 
pers of  foolscap,  do  receive  into  them,  most  kindly  and 
naturally,  the  impression  of  sonnets,  epigrams,  essays 
—  so  that  the  very  parings  of  a  counting-house  are,  in 
some  sort,  the  settings  up  of  an  author.  The  en- 
franchised quill,  that  has  plodded  all  the  morning 
among  the  cart-rucks  of  figures  and  c)rphers,  frisks 
and  curvets  so  at  its  ease  over  the  flowery  carpet- 
ground  of  a  midnight  dissertation.  —  It  feels  its 
promotion  *****  gQ  ^j^^t 
you  see,  upon  the  whole,  the  literary  dignity  of  Elia 
is  very  little,  if  at  all,  compromised  in  the  conde- 
scension. 

Not  that,  in  my  anxious  detail  of  the  many  com- 
modities incidental  to  the  life  of  a  public  office,  I 
would  be  thought  blind  to  certain  flaws,  which  a 
cunning  carper  might  be  able  to  pick  in  this  Joseph's 
vest.  And  here  I  must  have  leave,  in  the  fulness 
of  my  soul,  to  regret  the  abolition,  and  doing-away- 
with  altogether,  of  those  consolatory  interstices,  and 
sprinklings  of  freedom,  through  the  four  seasons, — 
the   red-letter  days,  now  become,  to  all  intents  and 


1 6  OXFORD  IN  THE  VACATION. 

purposes,  dead-letter  days.  There  was  Paul,  and 
Stephen,  and  Barnabas  — 

Andrew  and  John,  men  famous  in  old  times 

—  we  were  used  to  keep  all  their  days  holy,  as  long 
back  as  I  was  at  school  at  Christ's.  I  remember 
their  effigies,  by  the  same  token,  in  the  old  Basket 
Prayer    Book.     There    hung    Peter   in    his    uneasy 

posture holy  Bartlemy   in  the   troublesome   act 

of  flaying,  after  the  famous  Marsyas  by  Spagnoletti. 

1  honoured  them  all,  and   could   almost  have 

wept  the  defalcation  of  Iscariot  —  so  much  did  we 
love  to  keep  holy  memories  sacred  :  —  only  methought 
I  a  little  grudged  at  the  coalition  of  the  better  Jude 
with  Simon — clubbing  (as  it  were)  their  sanctities 
together,  to  make  up  one  poor  gaudy-day  between 
them  —  as  an  economy  unworthy  of  the  dispensation. 
These  were  bright  visitations  in  a  scholar's  and  a 
clerk's  life  —  "  far  oif  their  coming  shone."  —  I  was 
as  good  as  an  almanac  in  those  days.  I  could  have 
told  you  such  a  saint's-day  falls  out  next  week,  or  the 
week  after.  Peradventure  the  Epiphany,  by  some 
periodical  infelicity,  would,  once  in  six  years,  merge 
in  a  Sabbath.  Now  am  I  little  better  than  one  of 
the  profane.  Let  me  not  be  thought  to  arraign  the 
wisdom  of  my  civil  superiors,  who  have  judged  the 
further  observation  of  these  holy  tides  to  be  papistical, 
superstitious.     Only  in  a  custom  of  such  long  stand- 


OXFORD  IN  THE  VACATION.  17 

ing,  methinks,  if  their  Holinesses  the   Bishops  had, 

in  decency,  been  first  sounded but  I  am  wading 

out  of  my  depths.     I  am  not  the  man  to  decide  the 

limits  of  civil  and  ecclesiastical  authority I  am 

plain  Elia  —  no  Selden,  nor  Archbishop  Usher  — 
though  at  present  in  the  thick  of  their  books,  here  in 
the  heart  of  learning,  under  the  shadow  of  the 
mighty  Bodley. 

I  can  here  play  the  gentleman,  enact  the  student. 
To  such  a  one  as  myself,  who  has  been  defrauded 
in  his  young  years  of  the  sweet  food  of  academic 
institution,  nowhere  is  so  pleasant,  to  while  away  a 
few  idle  weeks  at,  as  one  or  other  of  the  Universities. 
Their  vacation,  too,  at  this  time  of  the  year,  falls  in 
so  pat  with  ours.  Here  I  can  take  my  walks  un- 
molested, and  fancy  myself  of  what  degree  or  stand- 
ing I  please.  I  seem  admitted  ad  eutidem.  I  fetch 
up  past  opportunities.  I  can  rise  at  the  chapel-bell, 
and  dream  that  it  rings  for  me.  In  moods  of  humility 
I  can  be  a  Sizar,  or  a  Servitor.  When  the  peacock 
vein  rises,  I  strut  a  Gentleman  Commoner.  In  graver 
moments,  I  proceed  Master  of  Arts.  Indeed  I  do 
not  think  I  am  much  unlike  that  respectable  charac- 
ter. I  have  seen  your  dim-eyed  vergers^  and  bed- 
makers  in  spectacles,  drop  a  bow  or  curtsy,  as  I 
pass,  wisely  mistaking  me  for  something  of  the  sort. 
I  go  about  in  black,  which  favours  the  notion. 
Only  in   Christ  Church  reverend  quadrangle,  I  can 


1 8  OXFORD   IN  THE   VACATION. 

be  content  to  pass  for   nothing  short  of  a  Seraphic 
Doctor. 

The  walks  at  these  times  are  so  much  one's  own, 
—  the  tall  trees  of  Christ's,  the  groves  of  Magdalen  ! 
The  halls  deserted,  and  with  open  doors,  inviting  one 
to  slip  in  unperceived,  and  pay  a  devoir  to  some 
Founder,  or  noble  or  royal  Benefactress  (that  should 
have  been  ours)  whose  portrait  seems  to  smile  upon 
their  over-looked  beadsman,  and  to  adopt  me  for 
their  own.  Then,  to  take  a  peep  in  by  the  way  at 
the  butteries,  and  sculleries,  redolent  of  antique  hos- 
pitality :  the  immense  caves  of  kitchens,  kitchen-fire- 
places, cordial  recesses;  ovens  whose  first  pies  were 
baked  four  centuries  ago ;  and  spits  which  have 
cooked  for  Chaucer !  Not  the  meanest  minister 
among  the  dishes  but  is  hallowed  to  me  through  his 
imagination,  and  the  Cook  goes  forth  a  Manciple. 

Antiquity  !  thou  wondrous  charm,  what  art  thou  ? 
that,  being  nothing,  art  every  thing !  When  thou 
wert,  thou  wert  not  antiquity  —  then  thou  wert  noth- 
ing, but  hadst  a  remoter  antiquity,  as  thou  called'st 
it,  to  look  back  to  with  blind  veneration ;  thou  thy- 
self being  to  thyself  flat,  jejune,  modern !  What 
mystery  lurks  in  this  retroversion?  or  what  half  Ja- 
nuses*  are  we,  that  cannot  look  forward  with  the  same 
idolatry  with  which  we  for  ever  revert !  The  mighty 
future  is  as  nothing,  being  every  thing !  the  past  is 
every  thing,  being  nothing  ! 

*  Januses  of  one  face.  —  Sir  Thomas  Browne. 


OXFORD   IN   THE   VACATION.  19 

What  were  thy  dark  ages  ?  Surely  the  sun  rose  as 
brightly  then  as  now,  and  man  got  him  to  his  work  in 
the  morning.  Why  is  it  that  we  can  never  hear  men- 
tion of  them  without  an  accompanying  feeling,  as 
though  a  palpable  obscure  had  dimmed  the  face  of 
things,  and  that  our  ancestors  wandered  to  and  fro 
groping  ! 

Above  all  thy  rarities,  old  Oxenford,  what  do  most 
arride  and  solace  me,  are  thy  repositories  of  moul- 
dering learning,  thy  shelves 

What  a  place  to  be  in  is  an  old  library  !  It  seems 
as  though  all  the  souls  of  all  the  writers,  that  have 
bequeathed  their  labours  to  these  Bodleians,  were  re- 
posing here,  as  in  some  dormitory,  or  middle  state. 
I  do  not  want  to  handle,  to  profane  the  leaves,  their 
winding-sheets.  I  could  as  soon  dislodge  a  shade. 
I  seem  to  inhale  learning,  walking  amid  their  foliage ; 
and  the  odour  of  their  old  moth- scented  coverings  is 
fragrant  as  the  first  bloom  of  those  sciential  apples 
which  grew  amid  the  happy  orchard. 

Still  less  have  I  curiosity  to  disturb  the  elder  repose 
of  MSS.  Those  varies  lectiones,  so  tempting  to  the 
more  erudite  palates,  do  but  disturb  and  unsettle  my 
faith.  I  am  no  Herculanean  raker.  The  credit  of 
the  three  witnesses  might  have  slept  unimpeached  for 
me.  I  leave  these  curiosities  to  Porson,  and  to  G.  D. 
—  whom,  by  the  way,  I  found  busy  as  a  moth  over 
some  rotten  archive,  rummaged  out  of  some  seldom- 


20  OXFORD   IN   THE   VACATION. 

explored  press,  in  a  nook  at  Oriel.  With  long  por- 
ing, he  is  grown  almost  into  a  book.  He  stood  as 
passive  as  one  by  the  side  of  the  old  shelves.  I 
longed  to  new-coat  him  in  Russia,  and  assign  him  his 
place.     He  might  have  mustered  for  a  tall  Scapula. 

D.  is  assiduous  in  his  visits  to  these  seats  of  learn- 
ing. No  inconsiderable  portion  of  his  moderate  for- 
tune, I  apprehend,  is  consumed  in  journeys  between 

them  and   CUfford's-inn where,  like  a  dove  on 

the  asp's  nest,  he  has  long  taken  up  his  unconscious 
abode,  amid  an  incongruous  assembly  of  attorneys, 
attorneys'  clerks,  apparitors,  promoters,  vermin  of 
the  law,  among  whom  he  sits,  "in  calm  and  sinless 
peace."  The  fangs  of  the  law  pierce  him  not  —  the 
winds  of  litigation  blow  over  his  humble  chambers 
—  the  hard  sheriffs  officer  moves  his  hat  as  he  passes 
— legal  nor  illegal  discourtesy  touches  him  —  none 
thinks  of  offering  violence  or  injustice  to  him  —  you 
would  as  soon  "  strike  an  abstract  idea." 

D.  has  been  engaged,  he  tells  me,  through  a  course 
of  laborious  years,  in  an  investigation  into  all  curious 
matter  connected  with  the  two  Universities ;  and  has 
lately  Ht  upon  a  MS.  collection  of  charters,  relative  to 

C ,  by  which  he  hopes  to  settle  some  disputed 

points  —  particularly  that  long  controversy  between 
them  as  to  priority  of  foundation.  The  ardor  with 
which  he  engages  in  these  liberal  pursuits,  I  am  afraid 
has  not  met  with  all  the  encouragement  it  deserved, 


OXFORD   IN   THE  VACATION.  21 

either  here,  or  at  C .     Your  caputs,  and  heads 

of  colleges,  care  less  than  any  body  else  about  these 
questions.  —  Contented  to  suck  the  milky  fountains 
of  their  Alma  Maters,  without  inquiring  into  the  ven- 
erable gentlewomen's  years,  they  rather  hold  such 
curiosities  to  be  impertinent  —  unreverend.  ~  They 
have  their  good  glebe  lands  in  manUy  and  care  not 
much  to  rake  into  the  title-deeds.  I  gather  at  least 
so  much  from  other  sources,  for  D.  is  not  a  man  to 
complain. 

D.  started  like  an  unbroke  heifer,  when  I  inter- 
rupted him.  A  priori  it  was  not  very  probable  that 
we  should  have  met  in  Oriel.  But  D.  would  have 
done  the  same,  had  I  accosted  him  on  the  sudden  in 
his  own  walks  in  Clifford's-inn,  or  in  the  Temple.  In 
addition  to  a  provoking  short-sightedness  (the  effect 
of  late  studies  and  watchings  at  the  midnight  oil)  D. 
is  the  most  absent  of  men.  He  made  a  call  the 
other  morning  at  our  friend  J/.'s  in  Bedford- square  ; 
and,  finding  nobody  at  home,  was  ushered  into  the 
hall,  where,  asking  for  pen  and  ink,  with  great  exact- 
itude of  purpose  he  enters  me  his  name  in  the  book 
—  which  ordinarily  lies  about  in  such  places,  to  re- 
cord the  failures  of  the  untimely  or  unfortunate  vis- 
itor —  and  takes  his  leave  with  many  ceremonies,  and 
professions  of  regret.  Some  two  or  three  hours  after, 
his  walking  destinies  returned  him  into  the  same 
neighbourhood  again,  and  again  the  quiet  image  of 


22  OXFORD   IN   THE  VACATION. 

the  fire-side  circle  at  M.*s Mrs.  M.  presiding  at 

it  like  a  Queen  Lar,  with  pretty  A.  S.  at  her  side 

striking  irresistibly  on  his  fancy,  he  makes  another 
call  (forgetting  that  they  were  "  certainly  not  to  re- 
turn from  the  country  before  that  day  week")  and 
disappointed  a  second  time,  inquires  for  pen  and 
paper  as  before  :  again  the  book  is  brought,  and  in 
the  line  just  above  that  in  which  he  is  about  to  print 
his  second  name  (his  re-script)  —  his  first  name 
(scarce  dry)  looks  out  upon  him  like  another  Sosia, 
or  as  if  a  man  should  suddenly  encounter  his  own 
duplicate  !  — The  effect  may  be  conceived.  D.  made 
many  a  good  resolution  against  any  such  lapses  in 
future.  I  hope  he  will  not  keep  them  too  rigorously. 
For  with  G.  D.  —  to  be  absent  from  the  body,  is 
sometimes  (not  to  speak  it  profanely)  to  be  present 
with  the  Lord.  At  the  very  time  when,  personally 
encountering  thee,  he  passes  on  with  no  recognition 

or,  being  stopped,  starts  like  a  thing  surprised 

—  at  that  moment,  reader,  he  is  on  Mount  Tabor  — 
or  Parnassus  —  or  co-sphered  with  Plato  —  or,  with 
Harrington,  framing  '^  immortal  commonwealths  "  — 
devising  some  plan  of  amelioration  to  thy  country, 

or   thy   species peradventure   meditating    some 

individual  kindness  or  courtesy,  to  be  done  to  ^hee 
thyself^  the  returning  consciousness  of  which  made 
him  to  start  so  guiltily  at  thy  obtruded  personal 
presence. 


OXFORD   IN  THE  VACATION.  23 

D.  is  delightful  any  where,  but  he  is  at  the  best  in 
such  places  as  these.  He  cares  not  much  for  Bath. 
He  is  out  of  his  element  at  Buxton,  at  Scarborough, 
or  Harrowgate.  The  Cam  and  the  Isis  are,  to  him 
"  better  than  all  the  waters  of  Damascus."  On  the 
Muses'  hill  he  is  happy,  and  good,  as  one  of  the 
Shepherds  on  the  Delectable  Mountains;  and  when 
he  goes  about  with  you  to  show  you  the  halls  and  col- 
leges, you  think  you  have  with  you  the  Interpreter  at 
the  House  Beautiful. 


CHRIST'S    HOSPITAL 
FIVE    AND    THIRTY   YEARS    AGO. 


In  Mr.  Lamb's  "  Works,"  published  a  year  or  two 
since,  I  find  a  magnificent  eulogy  on  my  old  school*, 
such  as  it  was,  or  now  appears  to  him  to  have  been, 
between  the  years  1782  and  1789.  It  happens,  very 
oddly,  that  my  own  standing  at  Christ's  was  nearly 
corresponding  with  his;  and,  with  all  gratitude  to 
him  for  his  enthusiasm  for  the  cloisters,  I  think  he 
has  contrived  to  bring  together  whatever  can  be  said 
in  praise  of  them,  dropping  all  the  other  side  of  the 
argument  most  ingeniously. 

I  remember  L.  at  school;  and  can  well  recollect 
that  he  had  some  peculiar  advantages,  which  I  and 
others  of  his  schoolfellows  had  not.  His  friends 
lived  in  town,  and  were  near  at  hand ;  and  he  had 
the  privilege  of  going  to  see  them,  almost  as  often  as 
he  wished,  through  some  invidious  distinction,  which 
was  denied  to  us.  The  present  worthy  sub-treasurer 
to  the  Inner  Temple  can  explain  how  that  happened. 

*  Recollections  of  Christ's  Hospital. 


CHRIST'S   HOSPITAL.  2$ 

He  had  his  tea  and  hot  rolls  in  a  morning,  while  we 
were  battening  upon  our  quarter  of  a  penny  loaf  — 
our  crug  —  moistened  with  attenuated  small  beer,  in 
wooden  piggins,  smacking  of  the  pitched  leathern 
jack  it  was  poured  from.  Our  Monday's  milk  por- 
ritch,  blue  and  tasteless,  and  the  pease  soup  of  Satur- 
day, coarse  and  choking,  were  enriched  for  him  with 
a  slice  of  "  extraordinary  bread  and  butter,"  from  the 
hot-loaf  of  the  Temple.  The  Wednesday's  mess  of 
millet,  somewhat  less  repugnant —  (we  had  three 
banyan  to  four  meat  days  in  the  week)  — was  en- 
deared to  his  palate  with  a  lump  of  double-refined, 
and  a  smack  of  ginger  (to  make  it  go  down  the  more 
glibly)  or  the  fragrant  cinnamon.  In  lieu  of  our 
half-pickled  Sundays,  or  quite  fresh  boiled  beef  on 
Thursdays  (strong  as  caro  equina) ,  with  detestable 
marigolds  floating  in  the  pail  to  poison  the  broth  — 
our  scanty  mutton  crags  on  Fridays  —  and  rather 
more  savoury,  but  grudging,  portions  of  the  same 
flesh,  rotten-roasted  or  rare,  on  the  Tuesdays  (the 
only  dish  which  excited  our  appetites,  and  disap- 
pointed our  stomachs,  in  almost  equal  proportion)  — 
he  had  his  hot  plate  of  roast  veal,  or  the  more  tempt- 
ing griskin  (exotics  unknown  to  our  palates),  cooked 
in  the  paternal  kitchen  (a  great  thing),  and  brought 
him  daily  by  his  maid  or  aunt !  I  remember  the 
good  old  relative  (in  whom  love  forbade  pride) 
squatting  down  upon  some  odd  stone  in  a  by-nook  of 


26  CHRIST'S  HOSPITAL 

the  cloisters,  disclosing  the  viands  (of  higher  regale 
than  those  cates  which  the  ravens  ministered  to  the 
Tishbite)  ;  and  the  contending  passions  of  L.  at  the 
unfolding.  There  was  love  for  the  bringer;  shame 
for  the  thing  brought,  and  the  manner  of  its  bring- 
ing ;  sympathy  for  those  who  were  too  many  to  share 
in  it ;  and,  at  top  of  all,  hunger  (eldest,  strongest  of 
the  passions  !)  predominant,  breaking  down  the  stony 
fences  of  shame,  and  awkwardness,  and  a  troubling 
over-consciousness. 

I  was  a  poor  friendless  boy.  My  parents,  and 
those  who  should  care  for  me,  were  far  away.  Those 
few  acquaintances  of  theirs,  which  they  could  reckon 
upon  being  kind  to  me  in  the  great  city,  after  a  little 
forced  notice,  which  they  had  the  grace  to  take  of  me 
on  my  first  arrival  in  town,  soon  grew  tired  of  my 
holiday  visits.  They  seemed  to  them  to  recur  too 
often,  though  I  thought  them  few  enough ;  and,  one 
after  another,  they  all  failed  me,  and  I  felt  myself 
alone  among  six  hundred  playmates. 

O  the  cruelty  of  separating  a  poor  lad  from  his 
early  homestead  !  The  yearnings  which  I  used  to 
have  towards  it  in  those  unfledged  years  !  How,  in 
my  dreams,  would  my  native  town  (far  in  the  west) 
come  back,  with  its  church,  and  trees,  and  faces ! 
How  I  would  wake  weeping,  and  in  the  anguish  of 
my  heart  exclaim  upon  sweet  Calne  in  Wiltshire  ! 

To  this  late  hour  of  my  life,  I  trace   impressions 


FIVE  AND  THIRTY   YEARS   AGO.  2/ 

left  by  the  recollection  of  those  friendless  holidays. 
The  long  warm  days  of  summer  never  return  but 
they  bring  with  them  a  gloom  from  the  haunting 
memory  of  those  whole-day-leaves,  when,  by  some 
strange  arrangement,  we  were  turned  out,  for  the 
live-long  day,  upon  our  own  hands,  whether  we  had 
friends  to  go  to,  or  none.  I  remember  those  bath- 
ing excursions  to  the  New- River,  which  L.  recalls 
with  such  relish,  better,  I  think,  than  he  can  —  for 
he  was  a  home- seeking  lad,  and  did  not  much  care 
for  such  water-pastimes :  —  How  merrily  we  would 
sally  forth  into  the  fields;  and  strip  under  the  first 
warmth  of  the  sun ;  and  wanton  like  young  dace  in 
the  streams ;  getting  us  appetites  for  noon,  which 
those  of  us  that  were  pennyless  (our  scanty  morning 
crust  long  since  exhausted)  had  -not  the  means  of 
allaying  —  while  the  cattle,  and  the  birds,  and  the 
fishes,  were  at  feed  about  us,  and  we  had  nothing  to 
satisfy  our  cravings — the  very  beauty  of  the  day,  and 
the  exercise  of  the  pastime,  and  the  sense  of  liberty, 
setting  a  keener  edge  upon  them  !  —  How  faint  and 
languid,  finally,  we  would  return,  towards  night-fall, 
to  our  desired  morsel,  half- rejoicing,  half- reluctant, 
that  the  hours  of  our  uneasy  liberty  had  expired  ! 

It  was  worse  in  the  days  of  winter,  to  go  prowling 
about  the  streets  objectless  —  shivering  at  cold  win- 
dows of  print-shops,  to  extract  a  little  amusement ; 
or  haply,  as  a  last  resort,  in  the  hope  of  a  little  nov- 


28  CHRIST'S  HOSPITAL 

elty,  to  pay  a  fifty-times  repeated  visit  (where  our 
individual  faces  should  be  as  well  known  to  the  war- 
den as  those  of  his  own  charges)  to  the  Lions  in  the 
Tower — to  whose  lev^e,  by  courtesy  immemorial,  we 
had  a  prescriptive  title  to  admission. 

L.'s  governor  (so  we  called  the  patron  who  pre- 
sented us  to  the  foundation)  lived  in  a  manner  under 
his  paternal  roof.  Any  complaint  which  he  had  to 
make  was  sure  of  being  attended  to.  This  was  un- 
derstood at  Christ's,  and  was  an  effectual  screen  to 
him  against  the  severity  of  masters,  or  worse  tyranny 
of  the  monitors.  The  oppressions  of  these  young 
brutes  are  heart- sickening  to  call  to  recollection.  I 
have  been  called  out  of  my  bed,  and  waked  for  the 
purpose,  in  the  coldest  winter  nights  —  and  this  not 
once,  but  night  after  night  —  in  my  shirt,  to  receive 
the  disciphne  of  a  leathern  thong,  with  eleven  other 
sufferers,  because  it  pleased  my  callow  overseer, 
when  there  has  been  any  talking  heard  after  we 
were  gone  to  bed,  to  make  the  six  last  beds  in  the 
dormitory,  where  the  youngest  children  of  us  slept, 
answerable  for  an  offence  they  neither  dared  to  com- 
mit, nor  had  the  power  to  hinder.  —  The  same  exe- 
crable tyranny  drove  the  younger  part  of  us  from  the 
fires,  when  our  feet  were  perishing  with  snow ;  and, 
under  the  cruelest  penalties,  forbad  the  indulgence  of 
a  drink  of  water,  when  we  lay  in  sleepless  summer 
nights,  fevered  with  the  season,  and  the  day's  spirts. 


FIVE   AND   THIRTY    YEARS   AGO.  29 

There  was  one  H ,  who,   I  learned,  in   after 

days,  was  seen  expiating  some  maturer  offence  in  the 
hulks.     (Do  I  flatter   myself  in   fancying   that   this 

might  be  the  planter  of  that  name,  who  suffered 

at    Nevis,  I  think,  or  St.  Kits, some  few  years 

since  ?  My  friend  Tobin  was  the  benevolent  instru- 
ment of  bringing  him  to  the  gallows.)  This  petty 
Nero  actually  branded  a  boy,  who  had  offended  him, 
with  a  red  hot  iron ;  and  nearly  starved  forty  of  us, 
with  exacting  contributions,  to  the  one  half  of  our 
bread,  to  pamper  a  young  ass,  which,  incredible  as 
it  may  seem,  with  the  connivance  of  the  nurse's 
daughter  (a  young  flame  of  his)  he  had  contrived 
to  smuggle  in,  and  keep  upon  the  leads  of  the  ward^ 
as  they  called  our  dormitories.  This  game  went  on 
for  better  than  a  week,  till  the  fooHsh  beast,  not  able 
to  fare  well  but  he  must  cry  roast  meat  —  happier 
than  Caligula's  minion,  could  he  have  kept  his  own 
counsel  —  but,  foolisher,  alas  !  than  any  of  his  species 
in  the  fables  —  waxing  fat,  and  kicking,  in  the  fulness 
of  bread,  one  unlucky  minute  would  needs  proclaim 
his  good  fortune  to  the  world  below ;  and,  laying  out 
his  simple  throat,  blew  such  a  ram's  horn  blast,  as 
(toppling  down  the  walls  of  his  own  Jericho)  set 
concealment  any  longer  at  defiance.  The  client  was 
dismissed,  with  certain  attentions,  to  Smithfield ;  but 
I  never  understood  that  the  patron  underwent  any 
censure  on  the  occasion.  This  was  in  the  steward- 
ship of  L.'s  admired  Perry. 


30  CHRIST'S   HOSPITAL 

Under  the  ^zme,  facile  administration,  can  L.  have 
forgotten  the  cool  impunity  with  which  the  nurses 
used  to  carry  away  openly,  in  open  platters,  for 
their  own  tables,  one  out  of  two  of  every  hot  joint, 
which  the  careful  matron  had  been  seeing  scrupulously 
weighed  out  for  our  dinners?  These  things  were 
daily  practised  in  that  magnificent  apartment,  which 
L.  (grown  connoisseur  since,  we  presume)  praises 
so  highly  for  the  grand  paintings  "  by  Verrio,  and 
others,"  with  which  it  is  "  hung  round  and  adorned." 
But  the  sight  of  sleek  well-fed  blue-coat  boys  in  pic- 
tures was,  at  that  time,  I  believe,  little  consolatory  to 
him,  or  us,  the  living  ones,  who  saw  the  better  part 
of  our  provisions  carried  away  before  our  faces  by 
harpies ;  and  ourselves  reduced  (with  the  Trojan  in 
the  hall  of  Dido) 

To  feed  our  mind  with  idle  portraiture. 

L.  has  recorded  the  repugnance  of  the  school  to 
gagSf  or  the  fat  of  fresh  beef  boiled  ;  and  sets  it  down 
to  some  superstition.  But  these  unctuous  morsels 
are  never  grateful  to  young  palates  (children  are 
universally  fat-haters)  and  in  strong,  coarse,  boiled 
meats,  unsalted,  are  detestable.  A  gag-eater  in  our  time 
was  equivalent  to  a  gouly  and  held  in  equal  detestation. 

suffered  under  the  imputation. 

*  T  was  said, 

He  ate  strange  flesh. 


FIVE   AND  THIRTY  YEARS   AGO.  31 

He  was  observed,  after  dinner,  carefully  to  gather 
up  the  remnants  left  at  his  table  (not  many,  nor  very 
choice  fragments,  you  may  credit  me)  —  and,  in  an 
especial  manner,  these  disreputable  morsels,  which  he 
would  convey  away,  and  secretly  stow  in  the  settle 
that  stood  at  his  bed-side.  None  saw  when  he  ate 
them.  It  was  rumoured  that  he  privately  devoured 
them  in  the  night.  He  was  watched,  but  no  traces 
of  such  midnight  practices  were  discoverable.  Some 
reported,  that,  on  leave-days,  he  had  been  seen  to 
carry  out  of  the  bounds  a  large  blue  check  handker- 
chief, full  of  something.  This  then  must  be  the 
accursed  thing.  Conjecture  next  was  at  work  to 
imagine  how  he  could  dispose  of  it.  Some  said  he 
sold  it  to  the  beggars.  This  belief  generally  prevailed. 
He  went  about  moping.  None  spake  to  him.  No 
one  would  play  with  him.  He  was  excommunicated ; 
put  out  of  the  pale  of  the  school.  He  was  too  power- 
ful a  boy  to  be  beaten,  but  he  underwent  every  mode 
of  that  negative  punishment,  which  is  more  grievous 
than  many  stripes.  Still  he  persevered.  At  length 
he  was  observed  by  two  of  his  school- fellows,  who  were 
determined  to  get  at  the  secret,  and  had  traced  him 
one  leave- day  for  that  purpose,  to  enter  a  large  worn- 
out  building,  such  as  there  exist  specimens  of  in 
Chancery-lane,  which  are  let  out  to  various  scales  of 
pauperism  with  open  doOr,  and  a  common  staircase. 
After  him   they  silently  slunk   in,  and   followed   by 


32  CHRIST'S   HOSPITAL 

stealth  up  four  flights,  and  saw  him  tap  at  a  poor 
wicket,  which  was  opened  by  an  aged  woman,  meanly 
clad.  Suspicion  was  now  ripened  into  certainty. 
The  informers  had  secured  their  victim.  They  had 
him  in  their  toils.  Accusation  was  formally  preferred, 
and  retribution  most  signal  was  looked  for.  Mr. 
Hathaway,  the  then  steward  (for  this  happened  a 
little  after  my  time),  with  that  patient  sagacity  which 
tempered  all  his  conduct,  determined  to  investigate 
the  matter,  before  he  proceeded  to  sentence.  The 
result  was,  that  the  supposed  mendicants,  the  receivers 
or  purchasers  of  the  mysterious  scraps,   turned  out 

to  be  the  parents  of ,  an  honest  couple  come  to 

decay,  —  whom  this  seasonable  supply  had,  in  all 
probability,  saved  from  mendicancy;  and  that  this 
young  stork,  at  the  expense  of  his  own  good  name, 
had  all  this  while  been  only  feeding  the  old  birds  !  — 
The  governors  on  this  occasion,  much  to  their  honour, 
voted  a  present  rehef  to  the  family  of ,  and  pre- 
sented him  with  a  silver  medal.  The  lesson  which 
the  steward  read  upon  rash  judgment,  on  the  occa- 
sion  of  publicly   delivering   the    medal    to ,    I 

believe,  would  not  be  lost  upon  his  auditory. —  I  had 

left  school  then,  but  I  well  remember .     He  was 

a  tall,  shambling  youth,  with  a  cast  in  his  eye,  not  at 
all  calculated  to  conciliate  hostile  prejudices.  I  have 
since  seen  him  carrying  a  baker's  basket.  I  think  I 
heard  he  did  not  do  quite  so  well  by  himself,  as  he 
had  done  by  the  old  folks. 


FIVE   AND  THIRTY    YEARS   AGO.  33 

I  was  a  hypochondriac  lad ;  and  the  sight  of  a  boy 
in  fetters,  upon  the  day  of  my  first  putting  on  the 
blue  clothes,  was  not  exactly  fitted  to  assuage  the 
natural  terrors  of  initiation.  I  was  of  tender  years, 
barely  turned  of  seven ;  and  had  only  read  of  such 
things  in  books,  or  seen  them  but  in  dreams.  I  was 
told  he  had  run  away.  This  was  the  punishment  for 
the  first  offence.  —  As  a  novice  I  was  soon  after  taken 
to  see  the  dungeons.  These  were  little,  square.  Bed- 
lam cells,  where  a  boy  could  just  lie  at  his  length 
upon  straw  and  a  blanket  —  a  mattress,  I  think,  was 
afterwards  substituted  —  with  a  peep  of  light,  let  in 
askance,  from  a  prison-orifice  at  top,  barely  enough  to 
read  by.  Here  the  poor  boy  was  locked  in  by  him- 
self all  day,  without  sight  of  any  but  the  porter  who 
brought  him  his  bread  and  water — who  might  not 
speak  to  him  ;  —  or  of  the  beadle,  who  came  twice  a 
week  to  call  him  out  to  receive  his  periodical  chastise- 
ment, which  was  almost  welcome,  because  it  separated 
him  for  a  brief  interval  from  solitude  :  —  and  here  he 
was  shut  up  by  himself^  nights^  out  of  the  reach  of  any 
sound,  to  suffer  whatever  horrors  the  weak  nerves,  and 
superstition  incident  to  his  time  of  life,  might  subject 
him  to*.     This  was  the  penalty  for  the  second  of- 

*  One  or  two  instances  of  lunacy,  or  attempted  suicide,  ac- 
cordingly, at  length  convinced  the  governors  of  the  impolicy  of 
this  part  of  the  sentence,  and  the  midnight  torture  to  the  spirits 
was  dispensed  with.  —  This  fancy  of  dungeons  for  children  was 

3 


34  CHRISrS   HOSPITAL 

fence.  —  Wouldst  thou  like,  reader,  to  see  what  be- 
came of  him  in  the  next  degree  ? 

The  culprit,  who  had  been  a  third  time  an  offender, 
and  whose  expulsion  was  at  this  time  deemed  irrever- 
sible, was  brought  forth,  as  at  some  solemn  auto  dafe, 
arrayed  in  uncouth  and  most  appalling  attire  —  all 
trace  of  his  late  "  watchet  weeds  "  carefully  effaced, 
he  was  exposed  in  a  jacket,  resembling  those  which 
London  lamplighters  formerly  delighted  in,  with  a  cap 
of  the  same.  The  effect  of  this  divestiture  was  such 
as  the  ingenious  devisers  of  it  could  have  anticipated. 
With  his  pale  and  frighted  features,  it  was  as  if  some 
of  those  disfigurements  in  Dante  had  seized  upon 
him.  In  this  disguisement  he  was  brought  into  the 
hall  {L.^s  favourite  state-room)^  where  awaited  him 
the  whole  number  of  his  school- fellows,  whose  joint 
lessons  and  sports  he  was  thenceforth  to  share  no 
more ;  the  awful  presence  of  the  steward,  to  be  seen 
for  the  last  time ;  of  the  executioner  beadle,  clad  in 
his  state  robe  for  the  occasion;  and  of  two  faces 
more,  of  direr  import,  because  never  but  in  these 
extremities  visible.  These  were  governors;  two  of 
whom,  by  choice,  or  charter,  were  always  accustomed 
to  officiate  at  these  Ultima  Supplicia  ;  not  to  mitigate 
(so  at  least  we  understood  it),  but  to  enforce  the 

a  sprout  of  Howard's  brain ;  for  which  (saving  the  reverence 
due  to  Holy  Paul)  methinks,  I  could  willingly  spit  upon  his 
statue. 


FIVE   AND   THIRTY   YEARS   AGO.  35 

Uttermost  stripe.  Old  Bamber  Gascoigne,  and  Peter 
Aubert,  I  remember,  were  colleagues  on  one  occasion, 
when  the  beadle  turning  rather  pale,  a  glass  of  brandy 
was  ordered  to  prepare  him  for  the  mysteries.  The 
scourging  was,  after  the  old  Roman  fashion,  long  and 
stately.  The  lictor  accompanied  the  criminal  quite 
round  the  hall.  We  were  generally  too  faint  with  at- 
tending to  the  previous  disgusting  circumstances,  to 
make  accurate  report  with  our  eyes  of  the  degree  of 
corporal  suffering  inflicted.  Report,  of  course,  gave 
out  the  back  knotty  and  livid.  After  scourging,  he 
was  made  over,  in  his  San  Benito,  to  his  friends,  if 
he  had  any  (but  commonly  such  poor  runagates  were 
friendless),  or  to  his  parish  officer,  who,  to  enhance 
the  effect  of  the  scene,  had  his  station  allotted  to  him 
on  the  outside  of  the  hall  gate. 

These  solemn  pageantries  were  not  played  off  so 
often  as  to  spoil  the  general  mirth  of  the  community. 
We  had  plenty  of  exercise  and  recreation  after  school 
hours;  and,  for  myself,  I  must  confess,  that  I  was 
never  happier,  than  in  them.  The  Upper  and  the 
Lower  Grammar  Schools  were  held  in  the  same  room  ; 
and  an  imaginary  Hne  only  divided  their  bounds. 
Their  character  was  as  different  as  that  of  the  inhabit- 
ants on  the  two  sides  of  the  Pyrennees.  The  Rev. 
James  Boyer  was  the  Upper  Master ;  but  the  Rev. 
Matthew  Field  presided  over  that  portion  of  the 
apartment,  of  which  I  had  the  good  fortune  to  be  a 


36  CHRIST'S   HOSPITAL 

member.  We  lived  a  life  as  careless  as  birds.  We 
talked  and  did  just  what  we  pleased,  and  nobody 
molested  us.  We  carried  an  accidence,  or  a  gram- 
mar, for  form;  but,  for  any  trouble  it  gave  us,  we 
might  take  two  years  in  getting  through  the  verbs 
deponent,  and  another  two  in  forgetting  all  that  we 
had  learned  about  them.  There  was  now  and  then 
the  formality  of  saying  a  lesson,  but  if  you  had  not 
learned  it,  a  brush  across  the  shoulders  (just  enough 
to  disturb  a  fly)  was  the  sole  remonstrance.  Field 
never  used  the  rod;  and  in  truth  he  wielded  the 
cane  with  no  great  good  will  —  holding  it  "like  a 
dancer."  It  looked  in  his  hands  rather  like  an  em- 
blem than  an  instrument  of  authority ;  and  an  emblemj 
too,  he  was  ashamed  of.  He  was  a  good  easy  man, 
that  did  not  care  to  ruffle  his  own  peace,  nor  perhaps 
set  any  great  consideration  upon  the  value  of  juvenile 
time.  He  came  among  us,  now  and  then,  but  often 
staid  away  whole  days  from  us ;  and  when  he  came, 
it  made  no  difference  to  us  —  he  had  his  private 
room  to  retire  to,  the  short  time  he  staid,  to  be  out  of 
the  sound  of  our  noise.  Our  mirth  and  uproar  went 
on.  We  had  classics  of  our  own,  without  being  be- 
holden to  "  insolent  Greece  or  haughty  Rome," 
that  passed  current  among  us  —  Peter  Wilkins  —  the 
Adventures  of  the  Hon.  Capt.  Robert  Boyle  —  the 
Fortunate  Blue  Coat  Boy —  and  the  like.  Or  we  cul- 
tivated a  turn  for  mechanic  or  scientific  operations ; 


FIVE  AND  THIRTY  YEARS   AGO.  37 

making  little  sun-dials  of  paper;  or  weaving  those 
ingenious  parentheses,  called  cat-cradles  ;  or  making 
dry  peas  to  dance  upon  the  end  of  a  tin  pipe ;  or 
studying  the  art  military  over  that  laudable  game 
"  French  and  English,"  and  a  hundred  other  such 
devices  to  pass  away  the  time  —  mixing  the  useful 
with  the  agreeable  —  as  would  have  made  the  souls 
of  Rousseau  and  John  Locke  chuckle  to  have  seen  us. 
Matthew  Field  belonged  to  that  class  of  modest 
divines  who  affect  to  mix  in  equal  proportion  the 
gentleman^  the  scholar,  and  the  Christian ;  but,  I 
know  not  how,  the  first  ingredient  is  generally  found 
to  be  the  predominating  dose  in  the  composition. 
He  was  engaged  in  gay  parties,  or  with  his  courtly 
bow  at  some  episcopal  levee,  when  he  should  have 
been  attending  upon  us.  He  had  for  many  years 
the  classical  charge  of  a  hundred  children,  during 
the  four  or  five  first  years  of  their  education ;  and 
his  very  highest  form  seldom  proceeded  further  than 
two  or  three  of  the  introductory  fables  of  Phsedrus. 
How  things  were  suffered  to  go  on  thus,  I  cannot 
guess.  Boyer,  who  was  the  proper  person  to  have 
remedied  these  abuses,  always  affected,  perhaps  felt, 
a  delicacy  in  interfering  in  a  province  not  strictly  his 
own.  I  have  not  been  without  my  suspicions,  that 
he  was  not  altogether  displeased  at  the  contrast  we 
presented  to  his  end  of  the  school.  We  were  a  sort 
of  Helots  to  his  young  Spartans.     He  would  some- 


38  CHRIST'S   HOSPITAL 

times,  with  ironic  deference,  send  to  borrow  a  rod  of 
the  Under  Master,  and  then,  with  Sardonic  grin, 
observe  to  one  of  his  upper  boys,  "how  neat  and 
fresh  the  twigs  looked."  While  his  pale  students 
were  battering  their  brains  over  Xenophon  and  Plato, 
with  a  silence  as  deep  as  that  enjoined  by  the  Samite, 
we  were  enjoying  ourselves  at  our  ease  in  our  little 
Goshen.  We  saw  a  little  into  the  secrets  of  his  dis- 
cipline, and  the  prospect  did  but  the  more  reconcile 
us  to  our  lot.  His  thunders  rolled  innocuous  for  us ; 
his  storms  came  near,  but  never  touched  us ;  contrary 
to  Gideon's  miracle,  while  all  around  were  drenched, 
our  fleece  was  dry.*  His  boys  turned  out  the  better 
scholars ;  we,  I  suspect,  have  the  advantage  in  temper. 
His  pupils  cannot  speak  of  him  without  something  of 
terror  allaying  their  gratitude ;  the  remembrance  of 
Field  comes  back  with  all  the  soothing  images  of 
indolence,  and  summer  slumbers,  and  work  like  play, 
and  innocent  idleness,  and  Elysian  exemptions,  and 
life  itself  a  "  playing  holiday." 

Though  sufficiently  removed  from  the  jurisdiction 
of  Boyer,  we  were  near  enough  (as  I  have  said)  to 
understand  a  little  of  his  system.  We  occasionally 
heard  sounds  of  the  Ululantes,  and  caught  glances 
of  Tartarus.  B.  v/as  a  rabid  pedant.  His  English 
style  was  crampt  to  barbarism.  His  Easter  anthems 
(for  his  duty  obliged  him  to  those  periodical  flights) 

*  Cowley. 


FIVE  AND  THIRTY  YEARS   AGO.  39 

were  grating  as  scrannel  pipes.*  —  He  would  laugh, 
ay,  and  heartily,  but  then  it  must  be  at  Flaccus's 

quibble  about  Rex or  at  the  tristis  severitas  in 

vultUy  or  inspicere  in  patiftas,  of  Terence  —  thin  jests, 
which  at  their  first  broaching  could  hardly  have  had 
vis  enough  to  move  a  Roman  muscle.  —  He  had  two 
wigs,  both  pedantic,  but  of  differing  omen.  The 
one  serene,  smiling,  fresh  powdered,  betokening  a 
mild  day.  The  other,  an  old  discoloured,  unkempt, 
angry  caxon,  denoting  frequent  and  bloody  execution. 
Woe  to  the  school,  when  he  made  his  morning  ap- 
pearance in  his  passy,  or  passionate  wig.  No  comet 
expounded  surer.  —  J.  B.  had  a  heavy  hand.  I  have 
known  him  double  his  knotty  fist  at  a  poor  trembling 
child  (the  maternal  milk  hardly  dry  upon  its  lips) 
with  a  "  Sirrah,  do  you  presume  to  set  your  wits  at 
me  ?  "  —  Nothing  was  more  common  than  to  see  him 
make  a  head-long  entry  into  the  school-room,  from 
his  inner  recess,  or  library,  and,  with  turbulent  eye, 
singling  out  a  lad,  roar  out,  "  Od's  my  life.  Sirrah," 

*  In  this  and  every  thing  B.  was  the  antipodes  of  his  co- 
adjutor. "While  the  former  was  digging  his  brains  for  crude 
anthems,  worth  a  pig-nut,  F.  would  be  recreating  his  gentle- 
manly fancy  in  the  more  flowery  walks  of  the  Muses.  A  little 
dramatic  effusion  of  his,  under  the  name  of  Vertumnus  and 
Pomona,  is  not  yet  forgotten  by  the  chroniclers  of  that  sort  of 
literature.  It  was  accepted  by  Garrick,  but  the  town  did  not 
give  it  their  sanction.  —  B.  used  to  say  of  it,  in  a  way  of  half- 
compliment,  half-irony,  that  it  was  too  classical  for  represent 
tation. 


40  CHRIST'S   HOSPITAL 

(his  favourite  adjuration)  "  I  have  a  great  mind  to 
whip  you," — then,  with  as  sudden  a  retracting  im- 
pulse, fling  back  into  his  lair  —  and,  after  a  cooling 
lapse  of  some  minutes  (during  which  all  but  the 
culprit  had  totally  forgotten  the  context)  drive  head- 
long out  again,  piecing  out  his  imperfect  sense,  as  if 
it  had  been  some  Devil's  Litany,  with  the  expletory 
yell  —  ^^  and  I  will,  too^  —  In  his  gentler  moods, 
when  the  rabidus  furor  was  assuaged,  he  had  resort 
to  an  ingenious  method,  peculiar,  for  what  I  have 
heard,  to  himself,  of  whipping  the  boy,  and  read- 
ing the  Debates,  at  the  same  time;  a  paragraph, 
and  a  lash  between;  which  in  those  times,  when 
parliamentary  oratory  was  most  at  a  height  and 
flourishing  in  these  realms,  was  not  calculated  to 
impress  the  patient  with  a  veneration  for  the  diffuser 
graces  of  rhetoric. 

Once,  and  but  once,  the  uplifted  rod  was  known 
to  fall  ineffectual  from  his  hand  —  when  droll  squint- 
ing W — having  been  caught  putting  the  inside  of 
the  master's  desk  to  a  use  for  which  the  archit'ect  had 
clearly  not  designed  it,  to  justify  himself,  with  great 
simpHcity  averred,  that  he  did  not  know  that  the  thing 
had  been  forewarned.  This  exquisite  irrecognition 
of  any  law  antecedent  to  the  oral  or  declaratory, 
struck  so  irresistibly  upon  the  fancy  of  all  who  heard 
it  (the  pedagogue  himself  not  excepted)  that  remis- 
sion was  unavoidable. 


FIVE  AND  THIRTY  YEARS  AGO.  41 

L.  has  given  credit  to  B.'s  great  merits  as  an  in- 
structor. Coleridge,  in  his  literary  life,  has  pro- 
nounced a  more  intelligible  and  ample  encomium  on 
them.  The  author  of  the  Country  Spectator  doubts 
not  to  compare  him  with  the  ablest  teachers  of  an- 
tiquity. Perhaps  we  cannot  dismiss  him  better  than 
with  the  pious  ejaculation  of  C.  —  when  he  heard 
that  his  old  master  was  on  his  death-bed  — "  Poor 
J.  B. !  —  may  all  his  faults  be  forgiven ;  and  may  he 
be  wafted  to  bliss  by  little  cherub  boys,  all  head  and 
wings,  with  no  bottoms  to  reproach  his  sublunary 
infirmities." 

Under  him  were  many  good  and  sound  scholars 
bred.  —  First  Grecian  of  my  time  was  Lancelot 
Pepys  Stevens,  kindest  of  boys  and  men,  since  Co- 
grammar-master   (and    inseparable  companion)   with 

Dr.  T e.     What   an  edifying   spectacle   did   this 

brace  of  friends  present  to  those  who  remembered  the 
anti-sociaUties  of  their  predecessors  !  —  You  never 
met  the  one  by  chance  in  the  street  without  a  wonder, 
which  was  quickly  dissipated  by  the  almost  immedi- 
ate sub-appearance  of  the  other.  Generally  arm  in 
arm,  these  kindly  coadjutors  lightened  for  each  other 
the  toilsome  duties  of  their  profession,  and  when, 
in  advanced  age,  one  found  it  convenient  to  retire, 
the  other  was  not  long  in  discovering  that  it  suited 
him  to  lay  down  the  fasces  also.  Oh,  it  is  pleasant, 
as  it  is  rare,  to  find  the  same  arm  linked  in  yours  at 
forty,  which  at  thirteen  helped  it  to  turn  over  the 


42  CHRIST'S   HOSPITAL 

Cicero  De  Amicitia,  or  some  tale  of  Antique  Friend- 
ship, which  the  young  heart  even  then  was  burning  to 

anticipate  !  —  Co-Grecian  with  S.  was  Th ,  who 

has  since  executed   with   abiUty   various    diplomatic 

functions  at  the  Northern  courts.     Th was  a  tall, 

dark,  saturnine  youth,  sparing  of  speech,  with  raven 
locks.  —  Thomas  Fanshaw  Middleton  followed  him 
(now  Bishop  of  Calcutta)  a  scholar  and  a  gentleman 
in  his  teens.  He  has  the  reputation  of  an  excellent 
critic ;  and  is  author  (besides  the  Country  Spectator) 
of  a  Treatise  on  the  Greek  Article,  against  Sharpe.  — 
M.  is  said  to  bear  his  mitre  high  in  India,  where  the 
regni  novitas  (I  dare  say)  sufficiently  justifies  the 
bearing.  A  humility  quite  as  primitive  as  that  of 
Jewel  or  Hooker  might  not  be  exactly  fitted  to  impress 
the  minds  of  those  Anglo- Asiatic  diocesans  with  a 
reverence  for  home  institutions,  and  the  church  which 
those  fathers  watered.  The  manners  of  M.  at  school, 
though  firm,  were  mild,  and  unassuming.  —  Next  to 
M.  (if  not  senior  to  him)  was  Richards,  author  of 
the  Aboriginal  Britons,  the  most  spirited  of  the 
Oxford    Prize    Poems;  a   pale,  studious   Grecian. — 

Then   followed    poor   S ,  ill-fated    M !    of 

these  the  Muse  is  silent. 

Finding  some  of  Edward's  race 
Unhappy,  pass  their  annals  by. 

Come  back  into  memory,  like  as  thou  wert  in  the 
day-spring   of   thy   fancies,   with   hope   like   a   fiery 


FIVE   AND   THIRTY   YEARS   AGO.  43 

column  before  thee  —  the  dark  pillar  not  yet  turned  — 
Samuel  Taylor  Coleridge  — *  Logician,  Metaphysician, 
Bard  !  —  How  have  I  seen  the  casual  passer  through 
the  Cloisters  stand  still,  intranced  with  admiration 
(while  he  weighed  the  disproportion  between  the 
speech  and  the  garb  of  the  young  Mirandula) ,  to  hear 
thee  uiifold,  in  thy  deep  and  sweet  intonations,  the 
mysteries  of  Jamblichus,  or  Plotinus  (for  even  in 
those  years  thou  waxedst  not  pale  at  such  philosophic 
draughts),  or  reciting  Homer  in  his  Greek,  or  Pindar 
while  the  walls  of  the  old  Grey  Friars  re- 
echoed to  the  accents  of  the  inspired  charity-boy  f  — 
Many  were  the  "  wit-combats,"  (to  dally  awhile  with 
the  words  of  old   Fuller,)   between  him  and  C.  V. 

Le  G ,  "  which  two  I  behold  like  a  Spanish  great 

gallion,  and  an  English  man  of  war ;  Master  Coleridge, 
like  the  former,  was  built  far  higher  in  learning,  solid, 
but  slow  in  his  performances.  C.  V.  L.,  with  the 
English  man  of  war,  lesser  in  bulk,  but  lighter  in 
sailing,  could  turn  with  all  tides,  tack  about,  and  take 
advantage  of  all  winds,  by  the  quickness  of  his  wit 
and  invention." 

Nor  shalt  thou,  their  compeer,  be  quickly  for- 
gotten, Allen,  with  the  cordial  smile,  and  still  more 
cordial  laugh,  with  which  thou  wert  wont  to  make  the 
old  Cloisters  shake,  in  thy  cognition  of  some  poig- 
nant jest  of  theirs  ;  or  the  anticipation  of  some  more 
material,  and,  peradventure,  practical  one,  of  thine 


44  CHRIST'S   HOSPITAL. 

own.  Extinct  are  those  smiles,  with  that  beautiful 
countenance,  with  which  (for  thou  wert  the  Nireus 
formosus  of  the  school),  in  the  days  of  thy  maturer 
waggery,  thou  didst  disarm  the  wrath  of  infuriated 
town-damsel,  who,  incensed  by  provoking  pinch, 
turning  tigress-like  round,  suddenly  converted  by  thy 
angel-look,  exchanged  the  half-formed  terrible 
"  bl ,"  for  a  gentler  greeting  —  "  bless  thy  hand- 
some face!  " 

Next  follow  two,  who  ought  to  be  now  alive,  and 

the    friends    of     Elia — ^the    junior    Le    G and 

F ;  who  impelled,  the  former  by  a  roving  tem- 
per, the  latter  by  too  quick  a  sense  of  neglect — ■ 
ill  capable  of  enduring  the  slights  poor  Sizars  are 
sometimes  subject  to  in  our  seats  of  learning  —  ex- 
changed their  Alma  Mater  for  the  camp ;  perishing, 
one  by  climate,  and  one  on  the  plains  of  Salamanca : 

—  Le    G ,    sanguine,     volatile,     sweet-natured ; 

F dogged,  faithful,  anticipative  of  insult,  warm- 
hearted, with  something  of  the  old  Roman  height 
about  him. 

Fine,  frank-hearted  Fr ,  the  present  master  of 

Hertford,  with  Marmaduke  T ,  mildest  of  Mis- 
sionaries—  and  both  my  good  friends  still  —  close 
the  catalogue  of  Grecians  in  my  time. 


THE  TWO   RACES   OF   MEN. 


The  human  species,  according  to  the  best  theory  I 
can  form  of  it,  is  composed  of  two  distinct  races, 
the  men  who  borrow,  and  the  men  who  lend.  To 
these  two  original  diversities  may  be  reduced  all 
those  impertinent  classifications  of  Gothic  and  Celtic 
tribes,  white  men,  black  men,  red  men.  All  the 
dwellers  upon  earth,  "  Parthians,  and  Medes,  and 
Elamites,"  flock  hither,  and  do  naturally  fall  in  with 
one  or  other  of  these  primary  distinctions.  The 
infinite  superiority  of  the  former,  which  I  choose  to 
designate  as  the  great  race,  is  discernible  in  their 
figure,  port,  and  a  certain  instinctive  sovereignty. 
The  latter  are  bom  degraded.  "  He  shall  serve  his 
brethren."  There  is  something  in  the  air  of  one  of 
this  cast,  lean  and  suspicious ;  contrasting  with  the 
open,  trusting,  generous  manners  of  the  other. 

Observe  who  have  been  the  greatest  borrowers  of 
all  ages  —  Alcibiades  —  Falstaff — Sir  Richard  Steele 
—  our  l^te  incomparable  Brinsley  —  what  a  family 
likeness  in  all  four ! 


46  THE  TWO   RACES   OF  MEN. 

What  a  careless,  even  deportment  hath  your  bor- 
rower !  what  rosy  gills !  what  a  beautiful  reliance 
on  Providence  doth  he  manifest, —  taking  no  more 
thought  than  lilies  !  What  contempt  for  money, — 
accounting  it  (yours  and  mine  especially)  no  better 
than  dross  !  What  a  liberal  confounding  of  those 
pedantic  distinctions  of  meum  and  tuMtn  !  or  rather, 
what  a  noble  simplification  of  language  (beyond 
Tooke),  resolving  these  supposed  opposites  into  one 
clear,  intelligible  pronoun  adjective!  —  What  near 
approaches  doth  he  make  to  the  primitive  commu- 
nity, —  to  the  extent  of  one  half  of  the  principle  at 
least !  — 

He  is  the  true  taxer  who  ''calleth  all  the  world 
up  to  be  taxed ;  "  and  the  distance  is  as  vast  be- 
tween him  and  one  of  us,  as  subsisted  betwixt  the 
Augustan  Majesty  and  the  poorest  obolary  Jew  that 
paid  it  tribute-pittance  at  Jerusalem !  —  His  ex- 
actions, too,  have  such  a  cheerful,  voluntary  air ! 
So  far  removed  from  your  sour  parochial  or  state- 
gatherers, —  those  ink-horn  varlets,  who  carry  their 
want  of  welcome  in  their  aces  !  He  cometh  to  you 
with  a  smile,  and  troubleth  you  with  no  receipt ;  con- 
fining himself  to  no  set  season.  Every  day  is  his 
Candlemas,  or  his  Feast  of  Holy  Michael.  He  ap- 
plieth  the  lene  tormentwn  of  a  pleasant  look  to  your 
purse,  —  which  to  that  gentle  warmth  expands  her 
silken  leaves,  as  naturally  as  the  cloak  of  the  travel- 


THE  TWO  RACES  OF  MEN.  47 

ler,  for  which  sun  and  wind  contended  !  He  is  the 
true  Propontic  which  never  ebbeth  !  The  sea  which 
taketh  handsomely  at  each  man's  hand.  In  vain  the 
victim,  whom  he  dehghteth  to  honour,  struggles  with 
destiny ;  he  is  in  the  net.  Lend  therefore  cheerfully, 
O  man  ordained  to  lend  —  that  thou  lose  not  in  the 
end,  with  thy  worldly  penny,  the  reversion  promised. 
Combine  not  preposterously  in  thine  own  person  the 
penalties  of  Lazarus  and  of  Dives  !  —  but,  when  thou 
seest  the  proper  authority  coming,  meet  it  smilingly, 
as  it  were  half-way.  Come,  a  handsome  sacrifice  ! 
See  how  light  he  makes  of  it !  Strain  not  courtesies 
with  a  noble  enemy. 

Reflections  like  the  foregoing  were  forced  upon 
my  mind  by  the  death  of  my  old  friend,  Ralph 
Bigod,  Esq.,  who  departed  this  life  on  Wednesday 
evening;  dying,  as  he  had  lived,  without  much 
trouble.  He  boasted  himself  a  descendant  from 
mighty  ancestors  of  that  name,  who  heretofore  held 
ducal  dignities  in  this  realm.  In  his  actions  and 
sentiments  he  belied  not  the  stock  to  which  he  pre- 
tended. Early  in  life  he  found  himself  invested 
with  ample  revenues ;  which,  with  that  noble  disin- 
terestedness which  I  have  noticed  as  inherent  in  men 
of  the  great  race,  he  took  almost  immediate  measures 
entirely  to  dissipate  and  bring  to  nothing :  for  there 
is  something  revolting  in  the  idea  of  a  king  holding 
a  private  purse ;  and  the  thoughts  of  Bigod  were  all 


48  THE  TWO   RACES   OF   MEN. 

regal.  Thus  furnished,  by  the  very  act  of  disfumish- 
mentj  getting  rid  of  the  cumbersome  luggage  of 
riches,  more  apt  (as  one  sings) 


To  slacken  virtue,  and  abate  her  edge, 
Than  prompt  her  to  do  aught  may  meri 


merit  praise, 

he  set  forth,  like  some  Alexander,  upon  his  great 
enterprise,  ''  borrowing  and  to  borrow  !  " 

In  his  periegesis,  or  triumphant  progress  through- 
out this  island,  it  has  been  calculated  that  he  laid 
a  tythe  part  of  the  inhabitants  under  contribution. 
I  reject  this  estimate  as  greatly  exaggerated :  —  but 
having  had  the  honour  of  accompanying  my  friend, 
divers  times,  in  his  perambulations  about  this  vast 
city,  I  own  I  was  greatly  struck  at  first  with  the 
prodigious  number  of  faces  we  met,  who  claimed 
a  sort  of  respectful  acquaintance  with  us.  He  was 
one  day  so  obliging  as  to  explain  the  phenomenon. 
It  seems,  these  were  his  tributaries ;  feeders  of  his 
exchequer;  gentlemen,  his  good  friends  (as  he  was 
pleased  to  express  himself),  to  whom  he  had  occa- 
sionally been  beholden  for  a  loan.  Their  multitudes 
did  no  way  disconcert  him.  He  rather  took  a  pride 
in  numbering  them ;  and,  with  Comus,  seemed 
pleased  to  be  "  stocked  with  so  fair  a  herd." 

With  such  sources,  it  was  a  wonder  how  he  con- 
trived to  keep  his  treasury  always  empty.  He  did 
it  by  force  of  an  aphorism,  which  he  had  often  in 


THE  TWO  RACES   OF  MEN.  49 

his  mouth,  that  "  money  kept  longer  than  three 
days  stinks."  So  he  made  use  of  it  while  it  was 
fresh.  A  good  part  he  drank  away  (for  he  was  an 
excellent  toss-pot),  some  he  gave  away,  the  rest  he 
threw  away,  literally  tossing  and  hurling  it  violently 
from  him  —  as  boys  do  burrs,  or  as  if  it  had  been 
infectious,  —  into  ponds,  or  ditches,  or  deep  holes,  — 
inscrutable  cavities  of  the  earth  ;  —  or  he  would  bury 
it  (where  he  would  never  seek  it  again)  by  a  river's 
side  under  some  bank,  which  (he  would  facetiously 
observe)  paid  no  interest  —  but  out  away  from  him 
it  must  go  peremptorily,  as  Hagar's  offspring  into 
the  wilderness,  while  it  was  sweet.  He  never  missed 
it.  The  streams  were  perennial  which  fed  his  fisc. 
When  new  supplies  became  necessary,  the  first  per- 
son that  had  the  felicity  to  fall  in  with  him,  friend 
or  stranger,  was  sure  to  contribute  to  the  deficiency. 
For  Bigod  had  an  undeniable  way  with  him.  He 
had  a  cheerful,  open  exterior,  a  quick  jovial  eye,  a 
bald  forehead,  just  touched  with  grey  {cana  fides). 
He  anticipated  no  excuse,  and  found  none.  And, 
waiving  for  a  while  my  theory  as  to  the  great  race, 
I  would  put  it  to  the  most  untheorising  reader,  who 
may  at  times  have  disposable  coin  in  his  pocket, 
whether  it  is  not  more  repugnant  to  the  kindliness  of 
his  nature  to  refuse  such  a  one  as  I  am  describing, 
than  to  say  no  to  a  poor  petitionary  rogue  (your 
bastard  borrower),  who,  by  his  mumping  visnomy, 
4 


50  THE  TWO  RACES   OF   MEN. 

tells  you,  that  he  expects  nothing  better ;  and,  there- 
fore, whose  preconceived  notions  and  expectations 
you  do  in  reality  so  much  less  shock  in  the  refusal. 

When  I  think  of  this  man;  his  fiery  glow  of 
heart;  his  swell  of  feeling;  how  magnificent,  how 
ideal  he  was ;  how  great  at  the  midnight  hour ;  and 
when  I  compare  with  him  the  companions  with  whom 
I  have  associated  since,  I  grudge  the  saving  of  a  few 
idle  ducats,  and  think  that  I  am  fallen  into  the  soci- 
ety of  lenders^  and  little  men. 

To  one  like  Elia,  whose  treasures  are  rather  cased 
in  leather  covers  than  closed  in  iron  coffers,  there  is 
a  class  of  alienators  more  formidable  than  that  which 
I  have  touched  upon;  I  mean  your  borrowers  of 
books  —  those  mutilators  of  collections,  spoilers  of 
the  symmetry  of  shelves,  and  creators  of  odd  vol- 
umes. There  is  Comberbatch,  matchless  in  his  dep- 
redations ! 

That  foul  gap  in  the  bottom  shelf  facing  you,  like 
a  great  eye-tooth  knocked  out  —  (you  are  now  with 
me  in  my  little  back  study  in  Bloomsbury,  reader !) 

with  the  huge  Switzer-like  tomes  on  each  side 

(like  the  Guildhall  giants,  in  their  reformed  posture, 
guardant  of  nothing)  once  held  the  tallest  of  my 
folios.  Opera  Bonaventum,  choice  and  massy  divin- 
ity, to  which  its  two  supporters  (school  divinity 
also,  but  of  a  lesser  calibre,  —  Bellarmine,  and  Holy 
Thomas),  showed  but  as  dwarfs,  —  itself  an  Asca- 
part !  —  that  Comberbatch  abstracted  upon  the  faith 


THE  TWO  RACES  OF  MEN.  51 

of  a  theory  he  holds,  which  is  more  easy,  I  confess, 
for  me  to  suffer  by  than  to  refute,  namely,  that  "  the 
title  to  property  in  a  book  (my  Bonaventure,  for 
instance),  is  in  exact  ratio  to  the  claimant's  pow- 
ers of  understanding  and  appreciating  the  same." 
Should  he  go  on  acting  upon  this  theory,  which  of 
our  shelves  is  safe? 

The  slight  vacuum  in  the  left-hand  case  —  two 
shelves   from   the    ceiling  —  scarcely   distinguishable 

but  by  the  quick  eye  of  a  loser was  whilom  the 

commodious  resting-place  of  Brown  on  Urn  Burial. 
C.  will  hardly  allege  that  he  knows  more  about  that 
treatise  than  I  do,  who  introduced  it  to  him,  and 
was  indeed  the  first  (of  the  modems)  to  discover  its 
beauties  —  but  so  have  I  known  a  foolish  lover  to 
praise  his  mistress  in  the  presence  of  a  rival  more 
qualified  to  carry  her  ofi"  than  himself. — Just  below, 
Dodsley's  dramas  want  their  fourth  volume,  where 
Vittoria  Corombona  is  !  The  remainder  nine  are  as 
distasteful  as  Priam's  refuse  sons,  when  the  Fates 
borrowed  Hector.  Here  stood  the  Anatomy  of 
Melancholy,  in  sober  state.  —  There  loitered  the 
Complete  Angler;  quiet  as  in  life,  by  some  stream 
side.  —  In  yonder  nook,  John  Buncle,  a  widower- 
volume,  with  "eyes  closed,"  mourns  his  ravished 
mate. 

One  justice  I  must  do  my  friend,  that  if  he  some- 
times, like  the  sea,  sweeps  away  a  treasure,  at 
another  time,  sea-like,  he  throws  up  as  rich  an  equi- 


52  THE   TWO  RACES   OF  MEN. 

valent  to  match  it.  I  have  a  small  under-collection 
of  this  nature  (my  friend's  gatherings  in  his  various 
calls),  picked  up,  he  has  forgotten  at  what  odd 
places,  and  deposited  with  as  Httle  memory  as  mine. 
I  take  in  these  orphans,  the  twice-deserted.  These 
proselytes  of  the  gate  are  welcome  as  the  true  He- 
brews. There  they  stand  in  conjunction;  natives, 
and  naturalised.  The  latter  seem  as  little  disposed 
to  inquire  out  their  true  lineage  as  I  am.  —  I  charge 
no  warehouse-room  for  these  deodands,  nor  shall 
ever  put  myself  to  the  ungentlemanly  trouble  of 
advertising  a  sale  of  them  to  pay  expenses. 

To  lose  a  volume  to  C.  carries  some  sense  and 
meaning  in  it.  You  are  sure  that  he  will  make  one 
hearty  meal  on  your  viands,  if  he  can  give  no  ac- 
count of  the  platter  after  it.  But  what  moved  thee, 
wayward,  spiteful  K.,  to  be  so  importunate  to  carry 
off  with  thee,  in  spite  of  tears  and  adjurations  to  thee 
to  forbear,  the  Letters  of  that  princely  woman,  the 
thrice  noble  Margaret  Newcastle  ?  —  knowing  at  the 
time,  and  knowing  that  I  knew  also,  thou  most  as- 
suredly wouldst  never  turn  over  one  leaf  of  the  illus- 
trious folio  :  —  what  but  the  mere  spirit  of  contra- 
diction, and  childish  love  of  getting  the  better  of 
thy  friend  ?  —  Then,  worst  cut  of  all '  to  transport  it 
with  thee  to  the  Galilean  land  — 

Unworthy  land  to  harbour  such  a  sweetness, 

A  virtue  in  which  all  ennobling  thoughts  dwelt, 

Pure  thoughts,  kind  thoughts,  high  thoughts,  her  sex's  wonder ! 


THE  TWO   RACES   OF   MEN.  53 

hadst  thou  not  thy  play-books,  and   books   of 

jests  and  fancies,  about  thee,  to  keep  thee  merry, 
even  as  thou  keepest  all  companies  with  thy  quips 
and  mirthful  tales?  —  Child  of  the  Green-room,  it 
was  unkindly  done  of  thee.  Thy  wife,  too,  that 
part-French,  better-part  Englishwoman! — that  she 
could  fix  upon  no  other  treatise  to  bear  away,  in 
kindly  token  of  remembering  us,  than  the  works  of 
Fulke  Greville,  Lord  Brook  —  of  which  no  French- 
man, nor  woman  of  France,  Italy,  or  England,  was 
ever  by  nature  constituted  to  comprehend  a  tittle  ! 
Was  there  not  Zimmerman  on  Solitude  ? 

Reader,  if  haply  thou  art  blessed  with  a  moderate 
collection,  be  shy  of  showing  it;  or  if  thy  heart 
overfloweth  to  lend  them,  lend  thy  books;  but  let 
it  be  to  such  a  one  as  S.  T.  C.  —  he  will  return  them 
(generally  anticipating  the  time  appointed)  with 
usury;  enriched  with  annotations,  tripling  their 
value.  I  have  had  experience.  Many  are  these 
precious  MSS.  of  his  —  (in  matter  oftentimes,  and 
almost  in  quantity  not  unfrequently,  vying  with  the 
originals)  — in  no  very  clerkly  hand  —  legible  in  my 
Daniel ;  in  old  Burton ;  in  Sir  Thomas  Browne ;  and 
those  abstruser  cogitations  of  the  Greville,  now,  alas  ! 

wandering  in  Pagan  lands. 1  counsel  thee,  shut 

not  thy  heart,  nor  thy  hbrary,  against  S.  T.  C. 


NEW  YEAR'S    EVE. 


Every  man  hath  two  birth- days :  two  days,  at  least, 
in  every  year,  which  set  him  upon  revolving  the  lapse 
of  time,  as  it  affects  his  mortal  duration.  The  one  is 
that  which  in  an  especial  manner  he  termeth  his. 
In  the  gradual  desuetude  of  old  observances,  this 
custom  of  solemnizing  our  proper  birth-day  hath 
nearly  passed  away,  or  is  left  to  children,  who  reflect 
nothing  at  all  about  the  matter,  nor  understand  any 
thing  in  it  beyond  cake  and  orange.  But  the  birth 
of  a  New  Year  is  of  an  interest  too  wide  to  be  pre- 
termitted by  king  or  cobbler.  No  one  ever  re- 
garded the  First  of  January  with  indifference.  It  is 
that  from  which  all  date  their  time,  and  count  upon 
what  is  left.  It  is  the  nativity  of  our  common 
Adam. 

Of  all  sound  of  all  bells  —  (bells,  the  music  nighest 
bordering  upon  heaven)  — most  solemn  and  touch- 
ing is  the  peal  which  rings  out  the  Old  Year.  I 
never  hear  it  without  a  gathering-up  of  my  mind  to 
a  concentration  of  all  the    images   that   have    been 


NEW   YEAR'S  EVE.  55 

diffused  over  the  past  twelvemonth ;  all  I  have  done 
or  suffered,  performed  or  neglected  —  in  that  re- 
gretted time.  I  begin  to  know  its  worth,  as  when  a 
person  dies.  It  takes  a  personal  colour;  nor  was 
it  a  poetical  flight  in  a  contemporary,  when  he  ex- 
claimed 

I  saw  the  skirts  of  the  departing  Year. 

It  is  no  more  than  what  in  sober  sadness  every  one 
of  us  seems  to  be  conscious  of,  in  that  awful  leave- 
taking.  I  am  sure  I  felt  it,  and  all  felt  it  with  me, 
last  night ;  though  some  of  my  companions  affected 
rather  to  manifest  an  exhilaration  at  the  birth  of  the 
coming  year,  than  any  very  tender  regrets  for  the 
decease  of  its  predecessor.  But  I  am  none  of  those 
who  — 

Welcome  the  coming,  speed  the  parting  guest. 

I  am  naturally,  beforehand,  shy  of  novelties ;  new 
books,  new  faces,  new  years,  —  from  some  mental 
twist  which  makes  it  difficult  in  me  to  face  the  pro- 
spective. I  have  almost  ceased  to  hope ;  and  am 
sanguine  only  in  the  prospects  of  other  (former) 
years.  I  plunge  into  foregone  visions  and  conclusions. 
I  encounter  pell-mell  with  past  disappointments.  I 
am  armour-proof  against  old  discouragements.  I  for- 
give, or  overcome  in  fancy,  old  adversaries.  I  play 
over  again  for  love,  as  the  gamesters  phrase  it, 
games,  for  which   I   once   paid   so   dear.     I  would 


56  NEW   YEAR'S  EVE. 

scarce  now  have  any  of  those  untoward  accidents 
and  events  of  my  life  reversed.  I  would  no  more 
alter  them  than  the  incidents  of  some  well-contrived 
novel.  Methinks,  it  is  better  that  I  should  have 
pined  away  seven  of  my  goldenest  years,  when  I  was 
thrall   to   the    fair   hair,   and    fairer    eyes,    of    Alice 

W n,  than  that  so    passionate   a   love-adventure 

should  be  lost.  It  was  better  that  our  family  should 
have  missed  that  legacy,  which  old  Dorrell  cheated 
us  of,  than  that  I  should  have  at  this  moment  two 
thousand  pounds  in  banco,  and  be  without  the  idea 
of  that  specious  old  rogue. 

In  a  degree  beneath  manhood,  it  is  my  infirmity 
to  look  back  upon  those  early  days.  Do  I  advance 
a  paradox,  when  I  say,  that,  skipping  over  the  in- 
tervention of  forty  years,  a  man  may  have  leave  to 
love  himself  J  without  the  imputation  of  self-love  ? 

If  I  know  aught  of  myself,  no  one  whose  mind  is 
introspective  —  and  mine  is  painfully  so  —  can  have 
a  less  respect  for  his  present  identity,  than  I  have 
for  the  man  Elia.  I  know  him  to  be  hght,  and  vain, 
and  humorsome ;  a  notorious  *  *  *  ^  addicted  to 
*  *  *  *  :  averse  from  counsel,  neither  taking  it, 
nor  offering  it;  —  *  *  *  besides;  a  stammering 
buffoon ;  what  you  will ;  lay  it  on,  and  spare  not ; 
I  subscribe  to  it  all,  and  much  more,  than  thou 
canst  be  willing  to  lay  at  his  door  —  —  —  but 
for  the  child  Elia  —  that  "other  me/'  there,  in  the 


NEW   YEAR'S   EVE.  57 

back-ground  —  I  must  take  leave  to  cherish  the  re- 
membrance of  that  young  master  —  with  as  little 
leference,  I  protest,  to  this  stupid  changeling  of 
five-and-forty,  as  if  it  had  been  a  child  of  some 
other  house,  and  not  of  my  parents.  I  can  cry  over 
its  patient  small-pox  at  five,  and  rougher  medica- 
ments. I  can  lay  its  poor  fevered  head  upon  the 
sick  pillow  at  Christ's,  and  wake  with  it  in  surprise 
at  the  gentle  posture  of  maternal  tenderness  hang- 
ing over  it,  that  unknown  had  watched  its  sleep.  I 
know  how  it  shrank  from  any  the  least  colour  of 
falsehood.  —  God  help  thee,  Elia,  how  art  thou 
changed !  Thou  art  sophisticated.  —  I  know  how 
honest,  how  courageous  (for  a  weakling)  it  was  — 
how  religious,  how  imaginative,  how  hopeful !  From 
what  have  I  not  fallen,  if  the  child  I  remember  was 
indeed  myself,  —  and  not  some  dissembling  guar- 
dian, presenting  a  false  identity,  to  give  the  rule  to  my 
unpractised  steps,  and  regulate  the  tone  of  my  moral 
being  ! 

That  I  am  fond  of  indulging,  beyond  a  hope  of 
sympathy,  in  such  retrospection,  may  be  the  symp- 
tom of  some  sickly  idiosyncrasy.  Or  is  it  owing 
to  another  cause ;  simply,  that  being  without  wife 
or  family,  I  have  not  learned  to  project  myself  enough 
out  of  myself;  and  having  no  offspring  of  my  own  to 
dally  with,  I  turn  back  upon  memory,  and  adopt  my 
own  early  idea,  as  my  heir  and  favourite?     If  these 


58  NEW   YEAR'S   EVE. 

speculations  seem  fantastical  to  thee,  reader  —  (a 
busy  man,  perchance),  if  I  tread  out  of  the  way  of 
thy  sympathy,  and  am  singularly-conceited  only,  I 
retire,  impenetrable  to  ridicule,  under  the  phantom 
cloud  of  Elia. 

'  The  elders,  with  whom  I  was  brought  up,  were  of 
a  character  not  likely  to  let  slip  the  sacred  obser- 
vance of  any  old  institution ;  and  the  ringing  out  of 
the  Old  Year  was  kept  by  them  with  circumstances 
of  peculiar  ceremony.  —  In  those  days  the  sound  of 
those  midnight  chimes,  though  it  seemed  to  raise 
hilarity  in  all  around  me,  never  failed  to  bring  a  train 
of  pensive  imagery  into  my  fancy.  Yet  I  then  scarce 
conceived  what  it  meant,  or  thought  of  it  as  a  reck- 
oning that  concerned  me.  Not  childhood  alone,  but 
the  young  man  till  thirty,  never  feels  practically  that 
he  is  mortal.  He  knows  it  indeed,  and,  if  need  were, 
he  could  preach  a  homily  on  the  fragility  of  life ;  but 
he  brings  it  not  home  to  himself,  any  more  than  in  a 
hot  June  we  can  appropriate  to  our  imagination  the 
freezing  days  of  December.  But  now,  shall  I  con- 
fess a  truth?  —  I  feel  these  audits  but  too  power- 
fully. I  begin  to  count  the  probabilities  of  my  dura- 
tion, and  to  grudge  at  the  expenditure  of  moments 
and  shortest  periods,  like  miser's  farthings.  In  pro- 
portion as  the  years  both  lessen  and  shorten,  I  set 
more  count  upon  their  periods,  and  would  fain  lay 
my  ineffectual   finger  upon  the  spoke  of  the  great 


NEW  YEAR'S  EVE.  59 

wheel.  I  am  not  content  to  pass  away  "like  a 
weaver's  shuttle."  Those  metaphors  solace  me  not, 
nor  sweeten  the  unpalatable  draught  of  mortality. 
I  care  not  to  be  carried  with  the  tide,  that  smoothly 
bears  human  Ufe  to  eternity ;  and  reluct  at  the  inev- 
itable course  of  destiny.  I  am  in  love  with  this  green 
earth  ;  the  face  of  town  and  country ;  the  unspeakable 
rural  solitudes,  and  the  sweet  security  of  streets.  I 
would  set  up  my  tabernacle  here.  I  am  content  to 
stand  still  at  the  age  to  which  I  am  arrived ;  I,  and 
my  friends :  to  be  no  younger,  no  richer,  no  hand- 
somer. I  do  not  want  to  be  weaned  by  age ;  or 
drop,  like  mellow  fruit,  as  they  say,  into  the  grave.  — 
Any  alteration,  on  this  earth  of  mine,  in  diet  or  in 
lodging,  puzzles  and  discomposes  me.  My  household- 
gods  plant  a  terrible  fixed  foot,  and  are  not  rooted 
up  without  blood.  They  do  not  willingly  seek  Lavin- 
ian  shores.     A  new  state  of  being  staggers  me. 

Sun,  and  sky,  and  breeze,  and  solitary  walks,  and 
summer  holidays,  and  the  greenness  of  fields,  and  the 
delicious  juices  of  meats  and  fishes,  and  society,  and 
the  cheerful  glass,  and  candle-light,  and  fire-side  con- 
versations, and  innocent  vanities,  and  jests,  and 
irony  itself — do  these  things  go  out  with  life? 

Can  a  ghost  laugh,  or  shake  his  gaunt  sides,  when 
you  are  pleasant  with  him? 

And  you,  my  midnight  darlings,  my  Folios  !  must 
I  part  with  the  intense  delight  of  having  you   (huge 


6o  NEW   YEAR'S   EVE. 

armfuls)  in  my  embraces?  Must  knowledge  come  to 
me,  if  it  come  at  all,  by  some  awkward  experiment  of 
intuition,  and  no  longer  by  this  familiar  process  of 
reading  ? 

Shall  I  enjoy  friendships  there,  wanting  the 
smiling  indications  which  point  me  to  them  here,  — 
the  recognisable  face  —  the  "  sweet  assurance  of  a 
look"—? 

In  winter  this  intolerable  disinclination  to  dying 
—  to  give  it  its  mildest  name  —  does  more  especially 
haunt  and  beset  me.  In  a  genial  August  noon,  be- 
neath a  sweltering  sky,  death  is  almost  problematic. 
At  those  times  do  such  poor  snakes  as  myself  enjoy 
an  immortality.  Then  we  expand  and  burgeon. 
Then  are  we  as  strong  again,  as  valiant  again,  as 
wise  again,  and  a  great  deal  taller.  The  blast  that 
nips  and  shrinks  me,  puts  me  in  thoughts  of  death. 
All  things  allied  to  the  insubstantial,  wait  upon  that 
master  feeling ;  cold,  numbness,  dreams,  perplexity ; 
moonlight  itself,  with  its  shadowy  and  spectral  ap- 
pearances, —  that  cold  ghost  of  the  sun,  or  Phoebus' 
sickly  sister,  like  that  innutritions  one  denounced  in 
the  Canticles  :  —  I  am  none  of  her  minions  —  I  hold 
with  the  Persian. 

Whatsoever  thwarts,  or  puts  me  out  of  my  way, 
brings  death  into  my  mind.  All  partial  evils,  like 
humours,  run  into  that  capital  plague-sore.  —  I  have 
heard   some   profess   an   indifference    to   life.     Such 


NEW    YEAR'S   EVE.  6 1 

hail  the  end  of  their  existence  as  a  port  of  refuge ; 
and  speak  of  the  grave  as  of  some  soft  arms,  in 
which  they  may  slumber  as  on  a  pillow.     Some  have 

wooed    death but  out  upon   thee,   I    say, 

thou  foul,  ugly  phantom  1  I  detest,  abhor,  execrate, 
and  (with  Friar  John)  give  thee  to  six-score  thousand 
devils,  as  in  no  instance  to  be  excused  or  tolerated, 
but  shunned  as  a  universal  viper;  to  be  branded, 
proscribed,  and  spoken  evil  of !  In  no  way  can  I  be 
brought  to  digest  thee,  thou  thin,  melancholy  Priva- 
tiotiy  or  more  frightful  and  confounding  Positive! 

Those  antidotes,  prescribed  against  the  fear  of 
thee,  are  altogether  frigid  and  insulting,  like  thy- 
self. For  what  satisfaction  hath  a  man,  that  he 
shall  "He  down  with  kings  and  emperors  in  death," 
who  in  his  life-time  never  greatly  coveted  the  society 
of  such  bed-fellows  ?  —  or,  forsooth,  that  "  so  shall 
the  fairest  face  appear?  "  —  why,  to  comfort  me,  must 
Alice  W n  be  a  goblin?  More  than  all,  I  con- 
ceive disgust  at  those  impertinent  and  misbecoming 
familiarities,  inscribed  upon  your  ordinary  tomb- 
stones. Every  dead  man  must  take  upon  himself 
to  be  lecturing  me  with  his  odious  truism,  that 
"  such  as  he  now  is,  I  must  shortly  be."  Not  so 
shortly,  friend,  perhaps,  as  thou  imaginest.  In  the 
meantime  I  am  alive.  I  move  about.  I  am  worth 
twenty  of  thee.  Know  thy  betters !  Thy  New 
Years'   Days  are  past.     I  survive,  a  jolly  candidate 


62  NEW    YEAR'S    EVE. 

for  1 82 1.  Another  cup  of  wine — and  while  that 
turn-coat  bell,  that  just  now  mournfully  chanted  the 
obsequies  of  1820  departed,  with  changed  notes 
lustily  rings  in  a  successor,  let  us  attune  to  its  peal 
the  song  made  on  a  like  occasion,  by  hearty,  cheerful 
Mr.  Cotton.  — 

THE   NEW   YEAR. 

Hark,  the  cock  crows,  and  yon  bright  star 
Tells  us,  the  day  himself 's  not  far  ; 
And  see  where,  breaking  from  the  night, 
He  gilds  the  western  hills  with  light. 
V/ith  him  old  Janus  doth  appear, 
Peeping  into  the  future  year, 
With  such  a  look  as  seems  to  say, 
The  prospect  is  not  good  that  way. 
Thus  do  we  rise  ill  sights  to  see, 
And  'gainst  ourselves  to  prophesy ; 
When  the  prophetic  fear  of  things 
A  more  tormenting  mischief  brings. 
More  full  of  soul-tormenting  gall, 
Than  direst  mischiefs  can  befall. 
But  stay  !  but  stay  !  methinks  my  sight, 
Better  informed  by  clearer  light, 
Discerns  sereneness  in  that  brow, 
That  all  contracted  seem'd  but  now 
His  revers'd  face  may  show  distaste. 
And  frown  upon  the  ills  are  past ; 
But  that  which  this  way  looks  is  clear. 
And  smiles  upon  the  New-born  Year. 
He  looks  too  from  a  place  so  high, 
The  Year  lies  open  to  his  eye ; 
And  all  the  moments  open  are 
To  the  exact  discoverer. 


NEW    YEARS    EVE.  63 

Yet  more  and  more  he  smiles  upon 

The  happy  revolution. 

Why  should  we  then  suspect  or  fear 

The  influences  of  a  year, 

So  smiles  upon  us  the  first  morn, 

And  speaks  us  good  so  soon  as  born  ? 

Plague  on  't !  the  last  was  ill  enough, 

This  cannot  but  make  better  proof  ; 

Or,  at  the  worst,  as  we  brush 'd  through 

The  last,  why  so  we  may  this  too  ; 

And  then  the  next  in  reason  shou'd 

Be  superexcellently  good ; 

For  the  worst  ills  (we  daily  see) 

Have  no  more  perpetuity. 

Than  the  best  fortunes  that  do  fall; 

Which  also  bring  us  wherewithal 

Longer  their  being  to  support, 

Than  those  do  of  the  other  sort : 

And  who  has  one  good  year  in  three. 

And  yet  repines  at  destiny, 

Appears  ungrateful  in  the  case. 

And  merits  not  the  good  he  has. 

Then  let  us  welcome  the  New  Guest 

With  lusty  brimmers  of  the  best ; 

Mirth  always  should  Good  Fortune  meet, 

And  renders  e'en  Disaster  sweet : 

And  though  the  Princess  turn  her  back, 

Let  us  but  line  ourselves  with  sack, 

We  better  shall  by  far  hold  out, 

Till  the  next  Year  she  face  about. 

How  say  you,  reader  —  do  not  these  verses  smack 
of  the  rough  magnanimity  of  the  old  English  vein? 
Do  they  not  fortify  like  a  cordial ;  enlarging  the 
heart,  and  productive  of  sweet  blood,  and  generous 
spirits,  m  the  concoction?     Where  be  those  puling 


64  NEW   YEAR'S   EVE. 

fears  of  death,  just  now  expressed  or  affected?  — 
Passed  like  a  cloud  —  absorbed  in  the  purging  sun- 
light of  clear  poetry  —  clean  washed  away  by  a  wave 
of  genuine  Helicon,  your  only  Spa  for  these  hypo- 
chondries  —  And  now  another  cup  of  the  generous  ! 
and  a  merry  New  Year,  and  many  of  them,  to  you 
all,  ray  masters ! 


MRS.   BATTLE'S   OPINIONS 


ON 


WHIST. 


"A  CLEAR  fire,  a  clean  hearth,  and  the  rigour  of 
the  game."  This  was  the  celebrated  wish  of  old 
Sarah  Battle  (now  with  God)  who,  next  to  her  de- 
votions, loved  a  good  game  at  whist.  She  was  none 
of  your  lukewarm  gamesters,  your  half  and  half 
players,  who  have  no  objection  to  take  a  hand,  if 
you  want  one  to  make  up  a  rubber;  who  affirm 
that  they  have  no  pleasure  in  winning;  that  they 
like  to  win  one  game,  and  lose  another;  that  they 
can  while  away  an  hour  very  agreeably  at  a  card- 
table,  but  are  indifferent  whether  they  play  or  no ; 
and  will  desire  an  adversary,  who  has  slipt  a  wrong 
card,  to  take  it  up  and  play  another.  These  insuf- 
ferable triflers  are  the  curse  of  a  table.  One  of  these 
flies  will  spoil  a  whole  pot.  Of  such  it  may  be  said, 
that  they  do  not  play  at  cards,  but  only  play  at 
playing  at  them. 

Sarah   Battle   was  none   of  that  breed.     She  de- 
tested them,  as  I  do,  from  her  heart  and  soul ;  and 
5 


63       MRS.    BATTLE'S    OPINIONS   ON  WHIST. 

would  not,  save  upon  a  striking  emergency,  wil- 
lingly seat  herself  at  the  same  table  with  them.  She 
loved  a  thorough-paced  partner,  a  determined  enemy. 
She  took,  and  gave,  no  concessions.  She  hated  fa- 
vours. She  never  made  a  revoke,  nor  ever  passed  it 
over  in  her  adversary  without  exacting  the  utmost 
forfeiture.  She  fought  a  good  fight :  cut  and  thrust. 
She  held  not  her  good  sword  (her  cards)  "  like  a 
dancer."  She  sate  bolt  upright ;  and  neither  showed 
you  her  cards,  nor  desired  to  see  yours.  All  people 
have  their  blind  side  —  their  superstitions ;  and  I  have 
heard  her  declare,  under  the  rose,  that  Hearts  was 
her  favourite  suit. 

I  never  in  my  life  —  and  I  knew  Sarah  Battle  many 
of  the  best  years  of  it  —  saw  her  take  out  her  snuff- 
box when  it  was  her  turn  to  play ;  or  snuff  a  candle 
in  the  middle  of  a  game ;  or  ring  for  a  servant,  till 
it  was  fairly  over.  She  never  introduced,  or  con- 
nived at,  miscellaneous  conversation  during  its  pro- 
cess. As  she  emphatically  observed,  cards  were 
cards  :  and  if  I  ever  saw  unmingled  distaste  in  her 
fine  last-century  countenance,  it  was  at  the  airs  of  a 
young  gentleman  of  a  literary  turn,  who  had  been 
with  difficulty  persuaded  to  take  a  hand ;  and  who, 
in  his  excess  of  candour,  declared,  that  he  thought 
there  was  no  harm  in  unbending  the  mind  now  and 
then,  after  serious  studies,  in  recreations  of  that 
kind  !     She  could  not  bear  to  have  her  noble  occu- 


MRS.   BATTLE'S   OPINIONS   ON   WHIST.      6^ 

pation,  to  which  she  wound  up  her  faculties,  con- 
sidered in  that  light.  It  was  her  business,  her 
duty,  the  thing  she  came  into  the  world  to  do,  — 
and  she  did  it.  She  unbent  her  mind  afterwards  — 
over  a  book. 

Pope  was  her  favourite  author :  his  Rape  of  the 
Lock  her  favourite  work.  She  once  did  me  the 
favour  to  play  over  with  me  (with  the  cards)  his 
celebrated  game  of  Ombre  in  that  poem ;  and  to 
explain  to  me  how  far  it  agreed  with,  and  in  what 
points  it  would  be  found  to  differ  from,  tradrille.  Her 
illustrations  were  apposite  and  poignant ;  and  I  had 
the  pleasure  of  sending  the  substance  of  them  to 
Mr.  Bowles :  but  I  suppose  they  came  too  late  to 
be  inserted  among  his  ingenious  notes  upon  that 
author. 

Quadrille,  she  has  often  told  me,  was  her  first 
love ;  but  whist  had  engaged  her  maturer  esteem. 
The  former,  she  said,  was  showy  and  specious,  and 
likely  to  allure  young  persons.  The  uncertainty 
and  quick  shifting  of  partners  —  a  thing  which  the 
constancy  of  whist  abhors;  —  the  dazzling  supre- 
macy and  regal  investiture  of  Spadille  —  absurd,  as 
she  justly  observed,  in  the  pure  aristocrasy  of  whist, 
where  his  crown  and  garter  give  him  no  proper 
power  above  his  brother-nobility  of  the  Aces ;  — 
the  giddy  vanity,  so  taking  to  the  inexperienced, 
of    playing    alone ;  —  above    all,    the    overpowering 


6S       MRS.   BATTLE'S   OPINIONS   ON   WHIST. 

attractions  of  a  Sans  Prendre  Vole^  —  to  the  triumph 
of  which  there  is  certainly  nothing  parallel  or 
approaching,  in  the  contingencies  of  whist ;  —  all 
these,  she  would  say,  make  quadrille  a  game  of 
captivation  to  the  young  and  enthusiastic.  But 
whist  was  the  solider  game :  that  was  her  word. 
It  was  a  long  meal;  not,  like  quadrille,  a  feast  of 
snatches.  One  or  two  rubbers  might  co-extend  in 
duration  with  an  evening.  They  gave  time  to  form 
rooted  friendships,  to  cultivate  steady  enmities.  She 
despised  the  chance-started,  capricious,  and  ever 
fluctuating  alliances  of  the  other.  The  skirmishes 
of  quadrille,  she  would  say,  reminded  her  of  the 
petty  ephemeral  embroilments  of  the  little  Italian 
states,  depicted  by  Machiavel ;  perpetually  changing 
postures  and  connexions ;  bitter  foes  to-day,  sugared 
darlings  to-morrow;  kissing  and  scratching  in  a 
breath  ;  —  but  the  wars  of  whist  were  comparable  to 
the  long,  steady,  deep-rooted,  rational,  antipathies 
of  the  great  French  and  English  nations. 

A  grave  simplicity  was  what  she  chiefly  admired 
in  her  favourite  game.  There  was  nothing  silly  in 
it,  like  the  nob  in  cribbage  —  nothing  superfluous. 
No  flushes  —  that  most  irrational  of  all  pleas  that  a 
reasonable  being  can  set  up  :  —  that  any  one  should 
claim  four  by  virtue  of  holding  cards  of  the  same 
mark  and  colour,  without  reference  to  the  playing 
of  the  game,  or  the  individual  worth  or  pretensions 


MRS.   BATTLE'S    OPINIONS   ON   WHIST.      69 

of  the  cards  themselves  !  She  held  this  to  be  a  sole- 
cism ;  as  pitiful  an  ambition  at  cards  as  alliteration 
is  in  authorship.  She  despised  superficiality,  and 
looked  deeper  than  the  colours  of  things.  —  Suits 
were  soldiers,  she  would  say,  and  must  have  a  uni- 
formity of  array  to  distinguish  them :  but  what 
should  we  say  to  a  foolish  squire,  who  should  claim 
a  merit  from  dressing  up  his  tenantry  in  red  jackets, 
that  never  were  to  be  marshalled  —  never  to  take 
the  field?  —  She  even  wished  that  whist  were  more 
simple  than  it  is;  and,  in  my  mind,  would  have 
stript  it  of  some  appendages,  which,  in  the  state  of 
human  frailty,  may  be  venially,  and  even  commend- 
ably  allowed  of.  She  saw  no  reason  for  the  deciding 
of  the  trump  by  the  turn  of  the  card.  Why  not  one 
suit  always  trumps  ?  —  Why  two  colours,  when  the 
mark  of  the  suits  would  have  sufficiently  distin- 
guished them  without  it?  — 

"But  the  eye,  my  dear  Madam,  is  agreeably  re- 
freshed with  the  variety.  Man  is  not  a  creature  of 
pure  reason  —  he  must  have  his  senses  delightfully 
appealed  to.  We  see  it  in  Roman  Catholic  coun- 
tries, where  the  music  and  the  paintings  draw  in 
many  to  worship,  whom  your  quaker  spirit  of  un- 
sensualizing  would  have  kept  out.  —  You,  yourself, 
have  a  pretty  collection  of  paintings  —  but  confess  to 
me,  whether,  walking  in  your  gallery  at  Sandham, 
among  those    clear   Vandykes,   or   among   the    Paul 


70       MRS.  BATTLE'S   OPINIONS    ON  WHIST. 

Potters  in  the  ante-room,  you  ever  felt  your  bosom 
glow  with  an  elegant  delight,  at  all  comparable  to 
that  you  have  it  in  your  power  to  experience  most 
evenings  over  a  well- arranged  assortment  of  the 
court-cards  ?  —  the  pretty  antic  habits,  like  heralds 
in  a  procession  —  the  gay  triumph-assuring  scarlets 
—  the  contrasting  deadly-killing  sables  —  the  '  hoary 
majesty  of  spades  *  —  Pam  in  all  his  glory  !  — 

"All  these  might  be  dispensed  with;  and,,  with 
their  naked  names  upon  the  drab  pasteboard,  the 
game  might  go  on  very  well,  picture-less.  But  the 
beauty  of  cards  would  be  extinguished  for  ever. 
Stripped  of  all  that  is  imaginative  in  them,  they 
must  degenerate  into  mere  gambling.  —  Imagine  a 
dull  deal  board,  or  drum  head,  to  spread  them  on, 
instead  of  that  nice  verdant  carpet  (next  to  nature's) , 
fittest  arena  for  those  courtly  combatants  to  play 
their  gallant  jousts  and  turneys  in  !  —  Exchange 
those  delicately- turned  ivory  markers  —  (work  of 
Chinese  artist,  unconscious  of  their  symbol,  —  or  as 
profanely  slighting  their  true  application  as  the 
arrantest  Ephesian  journeyman  that  turned  out 
those  little  shrines  for  the  goddess)  —  exchange  them 
for  little  bits  of  leather  (our  ancestors'  money)  or 
chalk  and  a  slate  !  "  — 

The  old  lady,  with  a  smile,  confessed  the  sound- 
ness of  my  logic ;  and  to  her  approbation  of  my  ar- 
guments on  her  favourite  topic  that  evening,  I  have 


MRS.   BATTLE'S   OPINIONS  ON   WHIST.      71 

always  fancied  myself  indebted  for  the  legacy  of  a 
curious  cribbage  board,  made  of  the  finest  Sienna 
marble,  which  her  maternal  uncle  (old  Walter 
Plumer,  whom  I  have  elsewhere  celebrated)  brought 
with  him  from  Florence  :  —  this,  and  a  trifle  of  five 
hundred  pounds,  came  to  me  at  her  death. 

The  former  bequest  (which  I  do  not  least  value) 
I  have  kept  with  religious  care ;  though  she  herself, 
to  confess  a  truth,  was  never  greatly  taken  with 
cribbage.  It  was  an  essentially  vulgar  game,  I  have 
heard  her  say,  —  disputing  with  her  uncle,  who  was 
very  partial  to  it.  She  could  never  heartily  bring 
her  mouth  to  pronounce  "^<?" — or  ^*  that's  a 
goT  She  called  it  an  ungrammatical  game.  The 
pegging  teased  her.  I  once  knew  her  to  forfeit  a 
rubber  (a  five  dollar  stake),  because  she  would  not 
take  advantage  of  the  turn-up  knave,  which  would 
have  given  it  her,  but  which  she  must  have  claimed 
by  the  disgraceful  tenure  of  declaring  "  two  for  his 
heels y  There  is  something  extremely  genteel  in 
this  sort  of  self-denial.  Sarah  Battle  was  a  gentle- 
woman born. 

Piquet  she  held  the  best  game  at  the  cards  for 
two  persons,  though  she  would  ridicule  the  pedantry 
of  the  terms  —  such  as  pique  — repique  —  the  capot  — 
they  savoured  (she  thought)  of  affectation.  But 
games  for  two,  or  even  three,  she  never  greatly 
cared  for.     She  loved  the  quadrate,  or  square.     She 


72       MRS.  BATTLE'S   OPINIONS   ON   WHIST. 

would  argue  thus :  —  Cards  are  warfare  :  the  ends 
are  gain,  with  glory.  But  cards  are  war,  in  dis- 
guise of  a  sport :  when  single  adversaries  encounter, 
the  ends  proposed  are  too  palpable.  By  themselves, 
it  is  too  close  a  fight;  with  spectators,  it  is  not 
much  bettered.  No  looker  on  can  be  interested, 
except  for  a  bet,  and  then  it  is  a  mere  affair  of 
money;  he  cares  not  for  your  luck  sympathetically ^ 
or  for  your  play. — Three  are  still  worse;  a  mere 
naked  war  of  every  man  against  every  man,  as  in 
cribbage,  without  league  or  alliance ;  or  a  rotation 
of  petty  and  contradictory  interests,  a  succession  of 
heartless  leagues,  and  not  much  more  hearty  infrac- 
tions of  them,  as  in  tradrille.  —  But  in  square  games 
{she  meant  whist)  all  that  is  possible  to  be  attained 
in  card-playing  is  accomplished.  There  are  the  in- 
centives of  profit  with  honour,  common  to  every 
species  —  though  the  latter  can  be  but  very  imper- 
fectly enjoyed  in  those  other  games,  where  the 
spectator  is  only  feebly  a  participator.  But  the  par- 
ties in  whist  are  spectators  and  principals  too.  They 
are  a  theatre  to  themselves,  and  a  looker-on  is  not 
wanted.  He  is  rather  worse  than  nothing,  and  an 
impertinence.  Whist  abhors  neutrality,  or  interests 
beyond  its  sphere.  You  glory  in  some  surprising 
stroke  of  skill  or  fortune,  not  because  a  cold  —  or 
even  an  interested — by-stander  witnesses  it,  but 
because    your  partner  sympathises    in    the   contin- 


MRS.   BATTLE'S  OPINIONS  ON   WHIST.       73 

gency.  You  win  for  two.  You  triumph  for  two. 
Two  are  exalted.  Two  again  are  mortified ;  which 
divides  their  disgrace,  as  the  conjunction  doubles 
(by  taking  off  the  invidiousness)  your  glories.  Two 
losing  to  two  are  better  reconciled,  than  one  to  one 
ill  that  close  butchery.  The  hostile  feeling  is  weak- 
ened by  multiplying  the  channels.  War  becomes  a 
civil  game.  —  By  such  reasonings  as  these  the  old 
lady  was  accustomed  to  defend  her  favourite  pas- 
time. 

No  inducement  could  ever  prevail  upon  her  to 
play  at  any  game,  where  chance  entered  into  the 
composition,  for  nothing.     Chance,  she  would  argue 

—  and  here  again,  admire  the  subtlety  of  her  con- 
clusion !  —  chance  is  nothing,  but  where  something 
else  depends  upon  it.  It  is  obvious,  that  cannot  be 
glory.  What  rational  cause  of  exultation  could  it 
give  to  a  man  to  turn  up  size  ace  a  hundred  times 
together  by  himself?  or  before  spectators,  where  no 
stake  was  depending  ?  —  Make  a  lottery  of  a  hun- 
dred thousand  tickets  with  but  one  fortunate  number 

—  and  what  possible  principle  of  our  nature,  except 
stupid  wonderment,  could  it  gratify  to  gain  that 
number  as  many  times  successively,  without  a  prize? 

—  Therefore  she  disliked  the  mixture  of  chance  in 
backgammon,  where  it  was  not  played  for  money. 
She  called  it  foolish,  and  those  people  idiots,  who 
were   taken   with   a   lucky   hit   under   such   circum- 


74       MRS.   BATTLE'S    Ol^INIONS    ON    WHIST. 

Stances.  Games  of  pure  skill  were  as  little  to  her 
fancy.  Played  for  a  stake,  they  were  a  mere  system 
of  over-reaching.  Played  for  glory,  they  were  a  mere 
setting  of  one  man's  wit,  —  his  memory,  or  combi- 
nation-faculty rather  —  against  another's ;  hke  a  mock- 
engagement  at  a  review,  bloodless  and  profitless.  — 
She  could  not  conceive  a  game  wanting  the  spritely 
infusion  of  chance,  —  the  handsome  excuses  of  good 
fortune.  Two  people  playing  at  chess  in  a  corner 
of  a  room,  whilst  whist  was  stirring  in  the  centre, 
would  inspire  her  with  insufferable  horror  and  ennui. 
Those  well-cut  similitudes  of  Castles,  and  Knights, 
the  imagery  of  the  board,  she  would  argue,  (and  I 
think  in  this  case  justly)  were  entirely  misplaced  and 
senseless.  Those  hard  head-contests  can  in  no  in- 
stance ally  with  the  fancy.  They  reject  form  and 
colour.  A  pencil  and  dry  slate  (she  used  to  say) 
were  the  proper  arena  for  such  combatants. 

To  those  puny  objectors  against  cards,  as  nurturing 
the  bad  passions,  she  would  retort,  that  man  is  a 
gaming  animal.  He  must  be  always  trying  to  get 
the  better  in  something  or  other  :  —  that  this  passion 
can  scarcely  be  more  safely  expended  than  upon  a 
game  at  cards :  that  cards  are  a  temporary  illusion ; 
in  truth,  a  mere  drama ;  for  we  do  but  play  at  being 
mightily  concerned,  where  a  few  idle  shillings  are  at 
stake,  yet,  during  the  illusion,  we  are  as  mightily 
concerned  as  those  whose  stake  is  crowns  and  king- 


MRS.   BATTLE'S   OPINIONS   ON   WHIST.       75 

doms.  They  are  a  sort  of  dream- fighting ;  much 
ado ;  great  battling,  and  little  bloodshed ;  mighty 
means  for  disproportioned  ends ;  quite  as  diverting, 
and  a  great  deal  more  innoxious,  than  many  of  those 
more  serious  gatnes  of  life,  which  men  play,  without 
esteeming  them  to  be  such. 

With  great  deference  to  the  old  lady's  judgment 
on  these  matters,  I  think  I  have  experienced  some 
moments  in  my  life,  when  playing  at  cards  for  noth- 
ing has  even  been  agreeable.  When  I  am  in  sick- 
ness, or  not  in  the  best  spirits,  I  sometimes  call  for 
the  cards,  and  play  a  game  at  piquet  for  love  with 
my  cousin  Bridget  —  Bridget  EHa. 

I  grant  there  is  something  sneaking  in  it :  but  with 
a  tooth-ache,  or  a  sprained  ancle,  —  when  you  are 
subdued  and  humble,  —  you  are  glad  to  put  up  with 
an  inferior  spring  of  action. 

There  is  such  a  thing  in  nature,  I  am  convinced, 
as  sick  whist. — 

I  grant  it  is  not  the  highest  style  of  man  —  I 
deprecate  the  manes  of  Sarah  Battle  —  she  lives  not, 
alas  !  to  whom  I  should  apologise.  — 

At  such  times,  those  terms  which  my  old  friend 
objected  to,  come  in  as  something  admissible.  —  I 
love  to  get  a  tierce  or  a  quatorze,  though  they  mean 
nothing.  I  am  subdued  to  an  inferior  interest. 
Those  shadows  of  winning  amuse  me. 

That  last  game   I   had  with  my  sweet  cousin   (I 


^6       MRS.   BATTLE'S  OPINIONS   ON   WHIST. 

capotted  her)  —  (dare  I  tell  thee,  how  foolish  I  am  ?) 
—  I  wished  it  might  have  lasted  for  ever,  though  we 
gained  nothing,  and  lost  nothing,  though  it  was  a 
mere  shade  of  play :  I  would  be  content  to  go  on  in 
that  idle  folly  for  ever.  The  pipkin  should  be  ever 
boihng,  that  was  to  prepare  the  gentle  lenitive  to  my 
foot,  which  Bridget  was  doomed  to  apply  after  the 
game  was  over :  and,  as  I  do  not  much  relish  appli- 
ances, there  it  should  ever  bubble.  Bridget  and  I 
should  be  ever  playing. 


A  CHAPTER  ON   EARS. 


I  HAVE  no  ear.  — 

Mistake  me  not,  reader,  —  nor  imagine  that  I  am 
by  nature  destitute  of  those  exterior  twin  appendages, 
hanging  ornaments,  and  (architecturally  speaking) 
handsome  volutes  to  the  human  capital.  Better  my 
mother  had  never  borne  me.  —  I  am,  I  think,  rather 
deUcately  than  copiously  provided  with  those  con- 
duits; and  I  feel  no  disposition  to  envy  the  mule 
for  his  plenty,  or  the  mole  for  her  exactness,  in  those 
ingenious  labyrinthine  inlets  —  those  indispensable 
side-intelligencers. 

Neither  have  I  incurred,  or  done  anything  to  in- 
cur, with  Defoe,  that  hideous  disfigurement,  which 
constrained  him  to  draw  upon  assurance  —  to  feel 
"quite  unabashed,"  and  at  ease  upon  that  article. 
1  was  never,  I  thank  my  stars,  in  the  pillory ;  nor,  if 
I  read  them  aright,  is  it  within  the  compass  of  my 
destiny,  that  I  ever  should  be. 

When  therefore  I  say  that  I  have  no  ear,  you  will 
understand  me  to  mean  — for  music.  —  To  say  that 


78  A  CHAPTER  ON  EARS. 

this  heart  never  melted  at  the  concourse  of  sweet 
sounds,  would  be  a  foul  self-libel.  —  "  Water  parted 
from  the  sea  "  never  fails  to  move  it  strangely.  So 
does  ^^  In  infancy y  But  they  were  used  to  be  sung 
at  her  harpsichord  (the  old-fashioned  instrument  in 
vogue  in  those  days)  by  a  gentlewoman  —  the  gen- 
tlest,  sure,  that  ever  merited   the  appellation  —  the 

sweetest  —  why  should  I  hesitate  to  name  Mrs.  S , 

once  the  blooming  Fanny  Weatheral  of  the  Temple 
—  who  had  power  to  thrill  the  soul  of  Elia,  small 
imp  as  he  was,  even  in  his  long  coats ;  and  to  make 
him  glow,  tremble,  and  blush  with  a  passion,  that 
not  faintly  indicated  the  day-spring  of  that  absorbing 
sentiment,  which  was  afterwards  destined  to  over- 
whelm and  subdue  his  nature  quite,  for  Alice 
W n. 

I  even  think  that  sentimentally  I  am  disposed  to 
harmony.  But  organically  I  am  incapable  of  a  tune. 
I  have  been  practising  "  God  save  the  King^^  all  my 
life ;  whistling  and  humming  of  it  over  to  myself  in 
solitary  corners;  and  am  not  yet  arrived,  they  tell 
me,  within  many  quavers  of  it.  Yet  hath  the  loyalty 
of  EHa  never  been  impeached. 

I  am  not  without  suspicion,  that  I  have  an  unde- 
veloped faculty  of  music  within  me.  For,  thrumming, 
in  my  wild  way,  on  my  friend  A's  piano,  the  other 
morning,  while  he  was  engaged  in  an  adjoining  par- 
lour, —  on  his  return  he  was  pleased  to  say,  "  he  thought 


A  CHAPTER  ON  EARS.  79 

it  could  not  be  the  maid!  "  On  his  first  surprise  at 
hearing  the  keys  touched  in  somewhat  an  airy  and 
masterful  way,  not  dreaming  of  me,  his  suspicions 
had  lighted  on  Jenny.  But  a  grace,  snatched  from 
a  superior  refinement,  soon  convinced  him  that  some 
being,  —  technically  perhaps  deficient,  but  higher 
informed  from  a  principle  common  to  all  the  fine 
arts,  —  had  swayed  the  keys  to  a  mood  which  Jenny, 
with  all  her  (less-cultivated)  enthusiasm,  could  never 
have  elicited  from  them.  I  mention  this  as  a  proof 
of  my  friend's  penetration,  and  not  with  any  view  of 
disparaging  Jenny. 

Scientifically  I  could  never  be  made  to  understand 
(yet  have  I  taken  some  pains)  what  a  note  in  music 
is ;  or  how  one  note  should  differ  from  another. 
Much  less  in  voices  can  I  distinguish  a  soprano  from 
a  tenor.  Only  sometimes  the  thorough  bass  I  con- 
trive to  guess  at,  from  its  being  supereminently  harsh 
and  disagreeable.  I  tremble,  however,  for  my  mis- 
application of  the  simplest  terms  of  that  which  I 
disclaim.  While  I  profess  my  ignorance,  I  scarce 
know  what  to  say  I  am  ignorant  of.  I  hate,  per- 
haps, by  misnomers.  Sostenuto  and  adagio  stand  in 
the  like  relation  of  obscurity  to  me  ;  and  Sol,  Fa,  Mi, 
Re,  is  as  conjuring  as  Baralipton. 

It  is  hard  to  stand  alone  —  in  an  age  like  this,  — 
(constituted  to  the  quick  and  critical  perception  of 
all  harmonious  combinations,  I  verily  believe,  beyond 


8o  A  CHAPTER   ON   EARS. 

all  preceding  ages,  since  Jubal  stumbled  upon  the 
gamut)  —  to  remain,  as  it  were,  singly  unimpres- 
sible  to  the  magic  influences  of  an  art,  which  is 
said  to  have  such  an  especial  stroke  at  soothing, 
elevating,  and  refining  the  passions.  —  Yet  rather 
than  break  the  candid  current  of  my  confessions,  I 
must  avow  to  you,  that  I  have  received  a  great 
deal  more  pain  than  pleasure  from  this  so  cried-up 
faculty. 

I  am  constitutionally  susceptible  of  noises.  A 
carpenter's  hammer,  in  a  warm  summer  noon,  will 
fret  me  into  more  than  midsummer  madness.  But 
those  unconnected,  unset  sounds  are  nothing  to  the 
measured  malice  of  music.  The  ear  is  passive  to 
those  single  strokes ;  willingly  enduring  stripes,  while 
it  hath  no  task  to  con.  To  music  it  cannot  be  pas- 
sive. It  will  strive  —  mine  at  least  will  —  'spite  of 
its  inaptitude,  to  thrid  the  maze ;  like  an  unskilled 
eye  painfully  poring  upon  hieroglyphics.  I  have  sat 
through  an  Italian  Opera,  till,  for  sheer  pain,  and 
inexplicable  anguish,  I  have  rushed  out  into  the 
noisiest  places  of  the  crowded  streets,  to  solace  my- 
self with  sounds,  which  I  was  not  obliged  to  follow, 
and  get  rid  of  the  distracting  torment  of  endless, 
fruitless,  barren  attention  !  I  take  refuge  in  the  un- 
pretending assemblage  of  honest  common-life  sounds ; 
—  and  the  purgatory  of  the  Enraged  Musician  be- 
comes my  paradise. 


A   CHAPTER   ON   EARS.  8l 

I  have  sat  at  an  Oratorio  (that  profanation  of  the 
purposes  of  the  cheerful  playhouse)  watching  the 
faces  of  the  auditory  in  the  pit  (what  a  contrast  to 
Hogarth's  Laughing  Audience  !)  immovable,  or  af- 
fecting some  faint  emotion,  —  till  (as  some  have 
said,  that  our  occupations  in  the  next  world  will  be 
but  a  shadow  of  what  delighted  us  in  this)  I  have 
imagined  myself  in  some  cold  theatre  in  Hades, 
where  some  of  the  for77ts  of  the  earthly  one  should  be 
kept  up,  with  none  of  the  enjoyment ;  or  like  that  — 

Party  in  a  parlour, 


All  silent,  and  all  damned  ! 

Above  all,  those  insufferable  concertos,  and  pieces 
of  music,  as  they  are  called,  do  plague  and  embitter 
my  apprehension.  —  Words  are  something;  but  to 
be  exposed  to  an  endless  battery  of  mere  sounds; 
to  be  long  a  dying,  to  lie  stretched  upon  a  rack  of 
roses;  to  keep  up  languor  by  unintermitted  effort; 
to  pile  honey  upon  sugar,  and  sugar  upon  honey,  to 
an  interminable  tedious  sweetness;  to  fill  up  sound 
with  feeling,  and  strain  ideas  to  keep  pace  with  it ; 
to  gaze  on  empty  frames,  and  be  forced  to  make  the 
pictures  for  yourself;  to  read  a  book,  all  stops ^  and 
be  obliged  to  supply  the  verbal  matter;  to  invent 
extempore  tragedies  to  answer  to  the  vague  gestures 
of  an  inexplicable  rambling  mime  —  these  are  faint 
shadows  of  what  I  have  undergone  from  a  series  of 
6 


82  A  CHAPTER   ON   EARS. 

the  ablest-executed  pieces  of  this  empty  instrumental 

music. 

I  deny  not,  that  in  the  opening  of  a  concert,  I 
have  experienced  something  vastly  lulling  and  agree- 
able :  —  afterwards  followeth  the  languor,  and  the 
oppression.  Like  that  disappointing  book  in  Patmos; 
or,  like  the  comings  on  of  melancholy,  described  by 
Burton,  doth  music  make  her  first  insinuating  ap- 
proaches :  — "  Most  pleasant  it  is  to  such  as  are 
melancholy  given,  to  walk  alone  in  some  solitary 
grove,  betwixt  wood  and  water,  by  some  brook  side, 
and  to  meditate  upon  some  delightsome  and  pleasant 
subject,  which  shall  affect  him  most,  amabilis  insama, 
and  mentis  gratissimus  error.  A  most  incomparable 
delight  to  build  castles  in  the  air,  to  go  smiling 
to  themselves,  acting  an  infinite  variety  of  parts, 
which  they  suppose,  and  strongly  imagine,  they  act, 
or  that  they  see  done.  —  So  delightsome  these  toys 
at  first,  they  could  spend  whole  days  and  nights 
without  sleep,  even  whole  years  in  such  contempla- 
tions, and  fantastical  meditations,  which  are  like  so 
many  dreams,  and  will  hardly  be  drawn  from  them  — 
winding  and  unwinding  themselves  as  so  many  clocks, 
and  still  pleasing  their  humours,  until  at  the  last  the 
SCENE  TURNS  UPON  A  SUDDEN,  and  they  being  now 
habitated  to  such  meditations  and  solitary  places,  can 
endure  no  company,  can  think  of  nothing  but  harsh 
and   distasteful    subjects.      Fear,    sorrow,    suspicion, 


A  CHAPTER  ON  EARS.  83 

suhrusticus  pudor,  discontent,  cares,  and  weariness 
of  life,  surprise  them  on  a  sudden,  and  they  can 
think  of  nothing  else :  continually  suspecting,  no 
sooner  are  their  eyes  open,  but  this  infernal  plague 
of  melancholy  seizeth  on  them,  and  terrifies  their 
souls,  representing  some  dismal  object  to  their 
minds ;  which  now,  by  no  means,  no  labour,  no  per- 
suasions they  can  avoid,  they  cannot  be  rid  of  it, 
they  cannot  resist." 

Something  like  this  "  scene-turning  "  I  have  ex- 
perienced at  the  evening  parties,  at  the  house  of  my 

good  Catholic  friend  Nov /  who,  by  the  aid  of 

a  capital  organ,  himself  the  most  finished  of  players, 
converts  his  drawing-room  into  a  chapel,  his  week 
days  into  Sundays,  and  these  latter  into  minor 
heavens.* 

When  my  friend  commences  upon  one  of  those 
solemn  anthems,  which  peradventure  struck  upon  my 
heedless  ear,  rambling  in  the  side  aisles  of  the  dim 
abbey,  some  five  and  thirty  years  since,  waking  a 
new  sense,  and  putting  a  soul  of  old  religion  into 
my  young  apprehension  —  (whether  it  be  that,  in 
which  the  psalmist,  weary  of  the  persecutions  of  bad 
men,  wisheth  to  himself  dove's  wings  —  or  that  other, 
which,  with  a  like  measure  of  sobriety  and  pathos, 
inquireth  by  what  means  the  young  man  shall  best 

♦  I  have  been  there,  and  still  would  go  ; 
'T  is  like  a  little  heaven  below.  —Dr.  IVatts. 


84  A  CHAPTER  ON  EARS. 

cleanse  his  mind)  —  a   holy  calm  pervadeth  me.  — 
I  am  for  the  time 


rapt  above  earth, 


And  possess  joys  not  promised  at  my  birth. 

But  when  this  master  of  the  spell,  not  content  to 
have  laid  a  soul  prostrate,  goes  on,  in  his  power,  to 
inflict  more  bliss  than  lies  in  her  capacity  to  receive, 
—  impatient  to  overcome  her  "  earthly "  with  his 
**  heavenly,"  —  still  pouring  in,  for  protracted  hours, 
fresh  waves  and  fresh  from  the  sea  of  sound,  or  from 
that  inexhausted  German  ocean,  above  which,  in 
triumphant  progress,  dolphin-seated,  ride  those  Arions 
Haydn  and  Mozart,  with  their  attendant  tritons, 
Bach,  Beethoven,  and  a  countless  tribe,  whom  to  at- 
tempt to  reckon  up  would  but  plunge  me  again  in 
the  deeps,  —  I  stagger  under  the  weight  of  harmony, 
reeling  to  and  fro  at  my  wit's  end ;  —  clouds,  as  of 
frankincense,  oppress  me  —  priests,  altars,  censers, 
dazzle  before  me  —  the  genius  of  his  religion  hath 
me  in  her  toils  —  a  shadowy  triple  tiara  invests  the 
brow  of  my  friend,  late  so  naked,  so  ingenuous  —  he 
is  Pope,  —  and  by  him  sits,  like  as  in  the  anomaly 
of  dreams,  a  she-Pope  too,  —  tri-coroneted  like  him- 
self !  —  I  am  converted,  and  yet  a  Protestant ;  —  at 
once  malleus  hereticorum,  and  myself  grand  heresi- 
arch :  or  three  heresies  centre  in  my  person :  —  I 
am  Marcion,  Ebion,  and  Cerinthus  —  Gog  and  Ma- 
gog —  what  not  ?  —  till  the  coming  in  of  the  friendly 


A  CHAPTER  ON  EARS.  85 

supper- tray  dissipates  the  figment,  and  a  draught  of 
true  Lutheran  beer  (in  which  chiefly  my  friend  shows 
himself  no  bigot)  at  once  reconciles  me  to  the  ra- 
tionalities of  a  purer  faith;  and  restores  to  me  the 
genuine  unterrifying  aspects  of  my  pleasant- counte- 
nanced host  and  hostess. 


ALL  FOOLS'   DAY. 


The  compliments  of  the  season  to  my  worthy  mas- 
ters, and  a  merry  first  of  April  to  us  all ! 

Many  happy  returns  of  this  day  to  you  —  and  you 

—  and  you,  Sir  —  nay,  never  frown,  m.an,  nor  put  a 
long  face  upon  the  matter.  Do  not  we  know  one 
another?  what  need  of  ceremony  among  friends?  we 
have  all  a  touch  of  that  same  —  you  understand  me 

—  a  speck  of  the  motley.  Beshrew  the  man  who  on 
such  a  day  as  this,  the  general  festival,  should  affect 
to  stand  aloof.  I  am  none  of  those  sneakers.  I  am 
free  of  the  corporation,  and  care  not  v/ho  knows  it. 
He  that  meets  me  in  the  forest  to-day,  shall  meet 
with  no  wise-acre,  I  can  tell  him.  Stultus  sum. 
Translate  me  that,  and  take  the  meaning  of  it  to 
yourself  for  your  pains.  What,  man,  we  have  four 
quarters  of  the  globe  on  our  side,  at  the  least 
computation. 

Fill  us  a  cup  of  that  sparkling  gooseberry  —  we 
will  drink  no  wise,  melancholy,  politic  port  on  this 
day  —  and  let  us  troll  the  catch  of  Amiens  —  due  ad 
me  —  due  ad  77ie  —  how  goes  it  ? 


ALL  FOOLS'   DAY.  8/ 

Here  shall  he  see 
Gross  fools  as  he. 

Now  would  I  give  a  trifle  to  know  historically  and 
authentically,  who  was  the  greatest  fool  that  ever 
lived.  I  would  certainly  give  him  in  a  bumper. 
Many,  of  the  present  breed,  I  think  I  could  without 
much  difficulty  name  you  the  party. 

Remove  your  cap  a  little  further,  if  you  please ; 
it  hides  my  bauble.  And  now  each  man  bestride 
his  hobby,  and  dust  away  his  bells  to  what  tune  he 
pleases.     I  will  give  you,  for  my  part, 


The  crazy  old  church  clock, 


And  the  bewildered  chimes. 

Good  master  Empedocles,  you  are  welcome.  It 
is  long  since  you  went  a  salamander-gathering  down 
^tna.  Worse  than  samphire-picking  by  some  odds. 
'T  is  a  mercy  your  worship  did  not  singe  your  mus- 
tachios. 

Ha  !  Cleombrotus  !  and  what  salads  in  faith  did 
you  light  upon  at  the  bottom  of  the  Mediterranean  ? 
You  were  founder,  I  take  it,  of  the  disinterested  sect 
of  the  Calenturists. 

Gebir,  my  old  free-mason,  and  prince  of  plas- 
terers at  Babel,  bring  in  your  trowel,  most  Ancient 
Grand  !  You  have  claim  to  a  seat  here  at  my  right 
hand,  as  patron  of  the  stammerers.     You  left  your 


88  ALL  FOOLS'  DAY. 

work,  if  I  remember  Herodotus  correctly,  at  eight 
hundred  milhon  toises,  or  thereabout,  above  the 
level  of  the  sea.  Bless  us,  what  a  long  bell  you 
must  have  pulled,  to  call  your  top  workmen  to  their 
nuncheon  on  the  low  grounds  of  Sennaar.  Or  did 
you  send  up  your  garlick  and  onions  by  a  rocket? 
I  am  a  rogue  if  I  am  not  ashamed  to  show  you  our 
Monument  on  Fish- street  Hill,  after  your  altitudes. 
Yet  we  think  it  somewhat. 

What,  the  magnanimous  Alexander  in  tears?  — 
cry,  baby,  put  its  finger  in  its  eye,  it  shall  have  an- 
other globe,  round  as  an  orange,  pretty  moppet ! 

Mister  Adams 'odso,   I  honour  your  coat  — 

pray  do  us  the  favour  to  read  to  us  that  sermon, 
which  you  lent  to  Mistress  Slipslop  —  the  twenty 
and  second  in  your  portmanteau  there  —  on  Female 
Incontinence  —  the  same  —  it  will  come  in  most  irre- 
levantly and  impertinently  seasonable  to  the  time  of 
the  day. 

Good  Master  Raymund  Lully,  you  look  wise. 
Pray  correct  that  error. 

Duns,  spare  your  definitions.  I  must  fine  you 
a  bumper,  or  a  paradox.  We  will  have  nothing 
said  or  done  syllogistically  this  day.  Remove  those 
logical  forms,  waiter,  that  no  gentleman  break  the 
tender  shins  of  his  apprehension  stumbling  across 
them. 

Master  Stephen,  you  are  late.  —  Ha  !  Cokes,  is  it 


ALL  FOOLS'   DAY.  89 

you  ?  —  Aguecheek,  my  dear  knight,  let  me  pay  my 
devoir  to  you.  —  Master  Shallow,  your  worship's 
poor  servant  to  command.  —  Master  Silence,  I  will 
use  few  words  with  you.  —  Slender,  it  shall  go  hard 
if  I  edge  not  you  in  somewhere.  —  You  six  will  en- 
gross all  the  poor  wit  of  the  company  to-day.  —  I 
know  it,  I  know  it. 

Ha !    honest   R ,  my    fine    old    Librarian    of 

Ludgate,  time  out  of  mind,  art  thou  here  again? 
Bless  thy  doublet,  it  is  not  over-new,  threadbare  as 
thy  stories  :  —  what  dost  thou  flitting  about  the  world 
at  this  rate?  —  Thy  customers  are  extinct,  defunct, 
bed-rid,  have  ceased  to  read  long  ago.  —  Thou  goest 
still  among  them,  seeing  if,  peradventure,  thou  canst 

hawk  a  volume   or   two.  — Good   Granville  S , 

thy  last  patron,  is  flown. 

King  Pandion,  he  is  dead. 

All  thy  friends  are  lapt  in  lead.  — 

Nevertheless,  noble  R ,  come   in,   and   take 

your  seat  here,  between  Armado  and  Quisada :  for 
in  true  courtesy,  in  gravity,  in  fantastic  smiling  to 
thyself,  in  courteous  smiling  upon  others,  in  the 
goodly  omature  of  well- apparelled  speech,  and  the 
commendation  of  wise  sentences,  thou  art  nothing 
inferior  to  those  accomplished  Dons  of  Spain.  The 
spirit  of  chivalry  forsake  me  for  ever,  when  I  forget 
thy  singing  the  song  of  Macheath,  which  declares 
that  he  might  be  happy  with  either^  situated  between 


90  ALL   FOOLS'  DAY. 

those  two  ancient  spinsters  —  when  I  forget  the  in- 
imitable formal  love  which  thou  didst  make,  turning 
now  to  the  one,  and  now  to  the  other,  with  that 
Malvolian  smile  —  as  if  Cervantes,  not  Gay,  had 
written  it  for  his  hero ;  and  as  if  thousands  of  pe- 
riods must  revolve,  before  the  mirror  of  courtesy 
could  have  given  his  invidious  preference  between  a 
pair  of  so  goodly-propertied  and  meritorious-equal 
damsels.  ***** 

To  descend  from  these  altitudes,  and  not  to  pro- 
tract our  Fools'  Banquet  beyond  its  appropriate 
day,  —  for  I  fear  the  second  of  April  is  not  many 
hours  distant  —  in  sober  verity  I  will  confess  a  truth 
to  thee,  reader.  I  love  a  Fool —  as  naturally,  as  if 
1  were  of  kith  and  kin  to  him.  When  a  child, 
with  child-like  apprehensions,  that  dived  not  below 
the  surface  of  the  matter,  I  read  those  Parables  — 
not  guessing  at  their  involved  wisdom  —  I  had  more 
yearnings  towards  that  simple  architect,  that  built 
his  house  upon  the  sand,  than  I  entertained  for  his 
more  cautious  neighbour;  I  grudged  at  the  hard 
censure  pronounced  upon  the  quiet  soul  that  kept 
his  talent ;  and  —  prizing  their  simplicity  beyond  the 
more  provident,  and,  to  my  apprehension,  somewhat 
unfeminine  wariness  of  their  competitors  —  I  felt  a 
kindliness,  that  almost  amounted  to  a  tendre^  for 
those  five  thoughtless  virgins.  —  I  have  never  made 
an  acquaintance  since,  that  lasted;  or  a  friendship, 


ALL  FOOLS'   DAY.  QI 

that  answered ;  with  any  that  had  not  some  tincture 
of  the  absurd  in  their  characters.  I  venerate  an 
honest  obhquity  of  understanding.  The  more  laugh- 
able blunders  a  man  shall  commit  in  your  company, 
the  more  tests  he  giveth  you,  that  he  will  not  betray 
or  overreach  you.  I  love  the  safety,  which  a  pal- 
pable hallucination  warrants;  the  security,  which  a 
word  out  of  season  ratifies.  And  take  my  word  for 
this,  reader,  and  say  a  fool  told  it  you,  if  you  please, 
that  he  who  hath  not  a  dram  of  folly  in  his  mixture, 
hath  pounds  of  much  worse  matter  in  his  composi- 
tion. It  is  observed,  that  "  the  foolisher  the  fowl 
or  fish,  —  woodcocks,  —  dotterels,  —  cod's-heads,  &c. 
the  finer  the  flesh  thereof,"  and  what  are  commonly 
the  world's  received  fools,  but  such  whereof  the 
world  is  not  worthy?  and  what  have  been  some  of 
the  kindliest  patterns  of  our  species,  but  so  many 
darlings  of  absurdity,  minions  of  the  goddess,  and 
her  white  boys  ?  —  Reader,  if  you  wrest  my  words 
beyond  their  fair  construction,  it  is  you,  and  not  I, 
that  are  the  April  Fool. 


A  QUAKER'S   MEETING. 


Still-born  Silence !  thou  that  art 

Flood-gate  of  the  deeper  heart  f 

Offspring  of  a  heavenly  kind  ! 

Frost  o'  the  mouth,  and  thaw  o'  the  mind  1 

Secrecy's  confident,  and  he 

Who  makes  religion  mystery  ! 

Admiration's  speaking'st  tongue  1 

Leave,  thy  desert  shades  among, 

Reverend  hermits'  hallowed  cells. 

Where  retired  devotion  dwells  ! 

With  thy  enthusiasms  come. 

Seize  our  tongues,  and  strike  us  dumb  !  * 


Reader,  would'st  thou  know  what  true  peace  and 
quiet  mean ;  would'st  thou  find  a  refuge  from  the 
noises  and  clamours  of  the  multitude ;  would'st 
thou  enjoy  at  once  solitude  and  society;  would'st 
thou  possess  the  depth  of  thy  own  spirit  in  stillness, 
without  being  shut  out  from  the  consolatory  faces  of 
thy  species ;  would'st  thou  be  alone,  and  yet  accom- 
panied; solitary,  yet  not  desolate;  singular,  yet  not 

*  From  "  Poems  of  all  sorts,"  by  Richard  Fleckno,  1653. 


A  QUAKER'S   MEETING.  93 

without  some  to  keep  thee  in  countenance;  a  unit 
in  aggregate ;  a  simple  in  composite :  —  come  with 
me  into  a  Quaker's  Meeting. 

Dost  thou  love  silence  deep  as  that  "  before  the 
winds  were  made?"  go  not  out  into  the  wilderness, 
descend  not  into  the  profundities  of  the  earth ;  shut 
not  up  thy  casements ;  nor  pour  wax  into  the  little 
cells  of  thy  ears,  with  Uttle-faith'd  self- mistrusting 
Ulysses.  —  Retire  with  me  into  a  Quaker's  Meeting. 

For  a  man  to  refrain  even  from  good  words,  and 
to  hold  his  peace,  it  is  commendable ;  but  for  a  mul- 
titude, it  is  great  mastery. 

What  is  the  stillness  of  the  desert,  compared  with 
this  place?  what  the  uncommunicating  muteness 
of  fishes  ?  —  here  the  goddess  reigns  and  revels.  — 
"  Boreas,  and  Cesias,  and  Argestes  loud,'*  do  not 
with  their  inter- confounding  uproars  more  augment 
the  brawl  —  nor  the  waves  of  the  blown  Baltic  with 
their  clubbed  sounds  —  than  their  opposite  (Silence 
her  sacred  self)  is  multiplied  and  rendered  more  in- 
tense by  numbers,  and  by  sympathy.  She  too  hath 
her  deeps,  that  call  unto  deeps.  Negation  itself 
hath  a  positive  more  and  less ;  and  closed  eyes  would 
seem  to  obscure  the  great  obscurity  of  midnight. 

There  are  wounds,  which  an  imperfect  solitude 
cannot  heal.  By  imperfect  I  mean  that  which  a 
man  enjoyeth  by  himself.  The  perfect  is  that  which 
he  can  sometimes  attain  in  crowds,  but  nowhere  so 


94  A  QUAKER'S   MEETING. 

absolutely  as  in  a  Quaker's  Meeting.  —  Those  first 
hermits  did  certainly  understand  this  principle, 
when  they  retired  into  Egyptian  solitudes,  not 
singly,  but  in  shoals,  to  enjoy  one  another's  want 
of  conversation.  The  Carthusian  is  bound  to  his 
brethren  by  this  agreeing  spirit  of  incommunicative- 
ness.  In  secular  occasions,  what  so  pleasant  as  to 
be  reading  a  book  through  a  long  winter  evening, 
with  a  friend  sitting  by  —  say,  a  wife  —  he,  or  she, 
too,  (if  that  be  probable),  reading  another,  without 
interruption,  or  oral  communication  ?  —  can  there  be 
iio  sympathy  without  the  gabble  of  words  ?  —  away 
with  this  inhuman,  shy,  single,  shade -and-cavem- 
haunting  solitariness.  Give  me.  Master  Zimmer- 
man, a  sympathetic  sohtude. 

To  pace  alone   in   the  cloisters,  or  side  aisles  of 
some  cathedral,  time- stricken ; 

Or  under  hanging  mountains, 
Or  by  the  fall  of  fountains  ; 

is  but  a  vulgar  luxury,  compared  with  that  which 
those  enjoy,  who  come  together  for  the  purposes  of 
more  complete,  abstracted  solitude.  This  is  the 
loneliness  "to  be  felt." — The  Abbey  Church  of 
Westminster  hath  nothing  so  solemn,  so  spirit- 
soothing,  as  the  naked  walls  and  benches  of  a  Qua- 
ker's Meeting.  Here  are  no  tombs,  no  inscriptions, 
sands,  ignoble  things, 


Dropt  from  the  ruined  sides  of  kings  ■ 


A  QUAKER'S  MEETING.  95 

but  here  is  something,  which  throws  Antiquity 
herself  into  the  fore-ground  —  Silence  — eldest  of 
things  —  language  of  old  Night  —  primitive  Dis- 
courser  —  to  which  the  insolent  decays  of  moulder- 
ing grandeur  have  but  arrived  by  a  violent,  and,  as 
we  may  say,  unnatural  progression. 

How  reverend  is  the  view  of  these  hushed  heads, 
Looking  tranquillity  I 

Nothing-plotting,  nought-caballing,  unmischiev- 
ous  synod !  convocation  without  intrigue !  parlia- 
ment without  debate  !  what  a  lesson  dost  thou  read 
to  council,  and  to  consistory !  —  if  my  pen  treat  of 
you  lightly  —  as  haply  it  will  wander  —  yet  my  spirit 
hath  gravely  felt  the  wisdom  of  your  custom,  when 
sitting  among  you  in  deepest  peace,  which  some 
out-welling  tears  would  rather  confirm  than  disturb, 
I  have  reverted  to  the  times  of  your  beginnings, 
and  the  sowings  of  the  seed  by  Fox  and  Dewes- 
bury.  —  I  have  witnessed  that,  which  brought  before 
my  eyes  your  heroic  tranquillity,  inflexible  to  the 
rude  jests  and  serious  violences  of  the  insolent  sol- 
diery, republican  or  royalist,  sent  to  molest  you  — 
for  ye  sate  betwixt  the  fires  of  two  persecutions,  the 
out-cast  and  off-scouring  of  church  and  presbytery. 
—  1  have  seen  the  reeling  sea-ruffian,  who  had 
wandered  into  your  receptacle,  with  the  avowed  in- 
tention of  disturbing  your  quiet,  from  the  very  spirit 
of  the  place  receive  in  a  moment  a  new  heart,  and 


96  A  QUAKER'S   MEETING. 

presently  sit  among  ye  as  a  lamb  amidst  lambs. 
And  I  remembered  Penn  before  his  accusers,  and 
Fox  in  the  bail-dock,  where  he  was  lifted  up  in 
spirit,  as  he  tells  us,  and  "  the  Judge  and  the  Jury 
became  as  dead  men  under  his  feet." 

Reader,  if  you  are  not  acquainted  with  it,  I 
would  recommend  to  you,  above  all  church-narra- 
tives, to  read  Sewel's  History  of  the  Quakers.  It 
is  in  folio,  and  is  the  abstract  of  the  journals  of 
Fox,  and  the  primitive  Friends.  It  is  far  more 
edifying  and  affecting  than  any  thing  you  will  read 
of  Wesley  and  his  colleagues.  Here  is  nothing  to 
stagger  you,  nothing  to  make  you  mistrust,  no  sus- 
picion of  alloy,  no  drop  or  dreg  of  the  worldly  or 
ambitious  spirit.  You  will  here  read  the  true  story 
of  that  much-injured,  ridiculed  man  (who  perhaps 
hath  been  a  by- word  in  your  mouth,)  —  James 
Naylor :  what  dreadful  sufferings,  with  what  patience, 
he  endured  even  to  the  boring  through  of  his  tongue 
with  red-hot  irons  without  a  murmur;  and  with 
what  strength  of  mind,  when  the  delusion  he  had 
fallen  into,  which  they  stigmatised  for  blasphemy, 
had  given  way  to  clearer  thoughts,  he  could  renounce 
his  error,  in  a  strain  of  the  beautifuUest  humility, 
yet  keep  his  first  grounds,  and  be  a  Quaker  still !  — 
so  different  from  the  practice  of  your  common  con- 
verts from  enthusiasm,  who,  when  they  apostatize, 
apostatize   all,  and    think    they    can   never  get   far 


A  QUAKER'S  MEETING.  97 

enough  from  the  society  of  their  former  errors,  even 
to  the  renunciation  of  some  saving  truths,  with  which 
they  had  been  mingled,  not  implicated. 

Get  the  Writings  of  John  Woolman  by  heart; 
and  love  the  early  Quakers. 

How  far  the  followers  of  these  good  men  in  our 
days  have  kept  to  the  primitive  spirit,  or  in  what 
proportion  they  have  substituted  formahty  for  it, 
the  Judge  of  Spirits  can  alone  determine.  I  have 
seen  faces  in  their  assemblies,  upon  which  the  dove 
sate  visibly  brooding.  Others  again  I  have  watched, 
when  my  thoughts  should  have  been  better  engaged, 
in  which  I  could  possibly  detect  nothing  but  a  blank 
inanity.  But  quiet  was  in  all,  and  the  disposition 
to  unanimity,  and  the  absence  of  the  fierce  contro- 
versial workings.  —  If  the  spiritual  pretensions  of  the 
Quakers  have  abated,  at  least  they  make  few  pre- 
tences. Hypocrites  they  certainly  are  not,  in  their 
preaching.  It  is  seldom  indeed  that  you  shall  see 
one  get  up  amongst  them  to  hold  forth.  Only  now 
and  then  a  trembling,  female,  generally  ancienty 
voice  is  heard  —  you  cannot  guess  from  what  part  of 
the  meeting  it  proceeds  —  with  a  low,  buzzing,  mu- 
sical sound,  laying  out  a  few  words  which  "  she 
thought  might  suit  the  condition  of  some  present," 
with  a  quaking  diffidence,  which  leaves  no  possi- 
bility of  supposing  that  any  thing  of  female  vanity 
was  mixed  up,  where  the  tones  were  so  full  of  ten- 
7 


98  A  QUAKER'S  MEETING. 

derness,  and  a  restraining  modesty.  —  The  men,  for 
what  I  have  observed,  speak  seldomer. 

Once  only,  and  it  was  some  years  ago,  I  wit- 
nessed a  sample  of  the  old  Foxian  orgasm.  It  was 
a  man  of  giant  stature,  who,  as  Wordsworth  phrases 
it,  might  have  danced  "  from  head  to  foot  equipt  in 
iron  mail."  His  frame  was  of  iron  too.  But  he  was 
malleable.  I  saw  him  shake  all  over  with  the  spirit 
—  I  dare  not  say,  of  delusion.  The  strivings  of  the 
outer  man  were  unutterable  —  he  seemed  not  to  speak, 
but  to  be  spoken  from.  I  saw  the  strong  man  bowed 
down,  and  his  knees  to  fail  —  his  joints  all  seemed 
loosening  —  it  was  a  figure  to  set  off  against  Paul 
Preaching  —  the  words  he  uttered  were  few,  and 
sound  —  he  was  evidently  resisting  his  will  —  keeping 
down  his  own  word- wisdom  with  more  mighty  effort, 
than  the  world's  orators  strain  for  theirs.  "  He  had 
been  a  Wit  in  his  youth,"  he  told  us,  with  expressions 
of  a  sober  remorse.  And  it  was  not  till  long  after 
the  impression  had  begun  to  wear  away,  that  I  was 
enabled,  with  something  like  a  smile,  to  recall  the 
striking  incongruity  of  the  confession  —  understand- 
ing the  term  in  its  worldly  acceptation  —  with  the 
frame  and  physiognomy  of  the  person  before  me. 
His  brow  would  have  scared  away  the  Levities  —  the 
Jocos  Risus-que  —  faster  than  the  Loves  fled  the  face 
of  Dis  at  Enna.  —  By  wit,  even  in  his  youth,  I  will 
be  sworn  he  understood  something  far  within  the 
limits  of  an  allowable  liberty. 


A  QUAKER'S   MEETING.  99 

More  frequently  the  Meeting  is  broken  up  without 
a  word  having  been  spoken.  But  the  mind  has  been 
fed.  You  go  away  with  a  sermon,  not  made  with 
hands.  You  have  been  in  the  milder  caverns  of 
Trophonius ;  or  as  in  some  den,  where  that  fiercest 
and  savagest  of  all  wild  creatures,  the  Tongue, 
that  unruly  member,  has  strangely  lain  tied  up  and 
captive.  You  have  bathed  with  stillness.  —  O  when 
the  spirit  is  sore  fretted,  even  tired  to  sickness  of 
the  janglings,  and  nonsense-noises  of  the  world, 
what  a  balm  and  a  solace  it  is,  to  go  and  seat  your- 
self, for  a  quiet  half  hour,  upon  some  undisputed 
corner  of  a  bench,  among  the  gentle  Quakers  ! 

Their  garb  and  stillness  conjoined,  present  an 
uniformity,  tranquil  and  herd-like  —  as  in  the  pasture 
—  "forty  feeding  like  one."  — 

The  very  garments  of  a  Quaker  seem  incapable 
of  receiving  a  soil;  and  cleanliness  in  them  to  be 
something  more  than  the  absence  of  its  contrary. 
Every  Quakeress  is  a  lily ;  and  when  they  come  up 
in  bands  to  their  Whitsun-conferences,  whitening 
the  easterly  streets  of  the  metropolis,  from  all  parts 
of  the  United  Kingdom,  they  show  hke  troops  of 
the  Shining  Ones. 


THE  OLD  AND  THE  NEW 
SCHOOLMASTER. 


My  reading  has  been  lamentably  desultory  and 
immethodical.  Odd,  out  of  the  way,  old  English 
plays,  and  treatises,  have  supplied  me  with  most  of 
my  notions,  and  ways  of  feeling.  In  every  thing 
that  relates  to  science^  I  am  a  whole  Encyclopaedia 
behind  the  rest  of  the  world.  I  should  have  scarcely 
cut  a  figure  among  the  franklins,  or  country  gen- 
tlemen, in  king  John's  days.  I  know  less  geography 
than  a  school-boy  of  six  weeks'  standing.  To  me  a 
map  of  old  Ortelius  is  as  authentic  as  Arrowsmith. 
I  do  not  know  whereabout  Africa  merges  into  Asia ; 
whether  Ethiopia  lie  in  one  or  other  of  those  great 
divisions;  nor  can  form  the  remotest  conjecture  of 
the  position  of  New  South  Wales,  or  Van  Diemen's 
Land.  Yet  do  I  hold  a  correspondence  with  a  very 
dear  friend  in  the  first-named  of  these  two  Terrae 
Incognitae.  I  have  no  astronomy.  I  do  not  know 
where  to  look  for  the  Bear,  or  Charles's  Wain ;  the 
place  of  any  star;    or  the  name   of  any  of  them  at 


THE  OLD  AND  THE  NEW  SCHOOLMASTER.  lOl 

sight.  I  guess  at  Venus  only  by  her  brightness  — 
and  if  the  sun  on  some  portentous  morn  were  to 
make  his  first  appearance  in  the  West,  I  verily  be- 
lieve, that,  while  all  the  world  were  gasping  in 
apprehension  about  me,  I  alone  should  stand  unter- 
rified,  from  sheer  incuriosity  and  want  of  observa- 
tion. Of  history  and  chronology  I  possess  some 
vague  points,  such  as  one  cannot  help  picking  up  in 
the  course  of  miscellaneous  study;  but  I  never  de- 
liberately sat  down  to  a  chronicle,  even  of  my  own 
country.  I  have  most  dim  apprehensions  of  the  four 
great  monarchies ;  and  sometimes  the  Assyrian, 
sometimes  the  Persian,  floats  as  first  in  my  fancy. 
I  make  the  widest  conjectures  concerning  Egypt, 
and  her  shepherd  kings.  My  friend  M.y  with  great 
pains -taking,  got  me  to  think  I  understood  the  first 
proposition  in  Euclid,  but  gave  me  over  in  despair 
at  the  second.  I  am  entirely  unacqj^,ainted  with  the 
modern  languages ;  and,  like  a  better  man  than  my- 
self, have  "  small  Latin  and  less  Greek."  I  am  a 
stranger  to  the  shapes  and  texture  of  the  commonest 
trees,  herbs,  flowers  —  not  from  the  circumstance  of 
my  being  town-born  —  for  I  should  have  brought 
the  same  inobservant  spirit  mto  the  world  with  me, 
had  I  first  seen  it  in  "  on  Devon's  leafy  shores, '  — 
and  am  no  less  at  a  loss  among  purely  town-objects, 
tools,  engines,  mechanic  processes.  —  Not  that  I  affect 
ignorance  —  but  my  head  has  not  many  mansions. 


102  THE  OLD  AND  THE  NEW  SCHOOLMASTER. 

nor  spacious;  and  I  have  been  obliged  to  fill  it 
with  such  cabinet  curiosities  as  it  can  hold  without 
aching.  I  sometimes  wonder,  how  I  have  passed 
my  probation  with  so  little  discredit  in  the  world, 
as  I  have  done,  upon  so  meagre  a  stock.  But  the 
fact  is,  a  man  may  do  very  well  with  a  very  little 
knowledge,  and  scarce  be  found  out,  in  mixed  com- 
pany; every  body  is  so  much  more  ready  to  pro- 
duce his  own,  than  to  call  for  a  display  of  youi 
acquisitions.  But  in  a  tete-a-tete  there  is  no  shuf- 
fling. The  truth  will  out.  There  is  nothing  which 
I  dread  so  much,  as  the  being  left  alone  for  a  quarter 
of  an  hour  with  a  sensible,  well-informed  man,  that 
does  not  know  me.  I  lately  got  into  a  dilemma  of 
this  sort.  — 

In  one  of  my  daily  jaunts  between  Bishopsgate 
and  Shacklewell,  the  coach  stopped  to  take  up  a 
staid-looking  gentleman,  about  the  wrong  side  of 
thirty,  who  was  giving  his  parting  directions  (while 
the  steps  were  adjusting),  in  a  tone  of  mild  au- 
thority, to  a  tall  youth,  who  seemed  to  be  neither 
his  clerk,  his  son,  nor  his  servant,  but  something 
partaking  of  all  three.  The  youth  was  dismissed, 
and  we  drove  on.  As  we  were  the  sole  passengers, 
he  naturally  enough  addressed  his  conversation  to 
me;  and  we  discussed  the  merits  of  the  fare,  the 
civihty  and  punctuality  of  the  driver;  the  circum- 
stance of  an  opposition  coach  having  been  lately  set 


THE  OLD  AND  THE  NEW  SCHOOLMASTER.    103 

up,  with  the  probabilities  of  its  success  —  to  all  which 
I  was  enabled  to  return  pretty  satisfactory  answers, 
having  been  drilled  into  this  kind  of  etiquette  by 
some  years'  daily  practice  of  riding  to  and  fro  in  the 
stage  aforesaid  — when  he  suddenly  alarmed  me  by 
a  startling  question,  whether  I  had  seen  the  show  of 
prize  cattle  that  morning  in  Smithfield?  Now  as  I 
had  not  seen  it,  and  do  not  greatly  care  for  such 
sort  of  exhibitions,  I  was  obliged  to  return  a  cold 
negative.  He  seemed  a  little  mortified,  as  well  as 
astonished,  at  my  declaration,  as  (it  appeared)  he 
was  just  come  fresh  from  the  sight,  and  doubtless 
had  hoped  to  compare  notes  on  the  subject.  How- 
ever he  assured  me  that  I  had  lost  a  fine  treat,  as  it 
far  exceeded  the  show  of  last  year.  We  were  now 
approaching  Norton  Falgate,  when  the  sight  of  some 
shop-goods  ticketed  freshened  him  up  into  a  disser- 
tation upon  the  cheapness  of  cottons  this  spring.  I 
was  now  a  little  in  heart,  as  the  nature  of  my  morn- 
ing avocations  had  brought  me  into  some  sort  of 
familiarity  with  the  raw  material ;  and  I  was  surprised 
to  find  how  eloquent  I  was  becoming  on  the  state  of 
the  India  market  —  when,  presently,  he  dashed  my 
incipient  vanity  to  the  earth  at  once,  by  inquiring 
whether  I  had  ever  made  any  calculation  as  to  the 
value  of  the  rental  of  all  the  retail  shops  in  London. 
Had  he  asked  of  me,  what  song  the  Sirens  sang,  or 
what  name  Achilles  assumed   when  he  hid   himself 


I04  THE  OLD  AND  THE  NEW  SCHOOLMASTER. 

among  women,  I  might,  with  Sir  Thomas  Browne, 
have  hazarded  a  "wide  solution*."  My  companion 
saw  my  embarrassment,  and,  the  almhouses  beyond 
Shoreditch  just  coming  in  view,  with  great  good- 
nature and  dexterity  shifted  his  conversation  to  the 
subject  of  pubUc  charities;  which  led  to  the  com- 
parative merits  of  provision  for  the  poor  in  past  and 
present  times,  with  observations  on  the  old  monas- 
tic institutions,  and  charitable  orders ;  —  but,  finding 
me  rather  dimly  impressed  with  some  glimmering 
notions  from  old  poetic  associations,  than  strongly 
fortified  with  any  speculations  reducible  to  calcula- 
tion on  the  subject,  he  gave  the  matter  up;  and, 
the  country  beginning  to  open  more  and  more  upon 
us,  as  we  approached  the  turnpike  at  Kingsland  (the 
destined  termination  of  his  journey),  he  put  a  home 
thrust  upon  me,  in  the  most  unfortunate  position  he 
could  have  chosen,  by  advancing  some  queries  rela- 
tive to  the  North  Pole  Expedition.  While  I  was 
muttering  out  something  about  the  Panorama  of  those 
strange  regions  (which  I  had  actually  seen),  by  way 
of  parrying  the  question,  the  coach  stopping  relieved 
me  from  any  further  apprehensions.  My  companion 
getting  out,  left  me  in  the  comfortable  possession  of 
my  ignorance ;  and  I  heard  him,  as  he  went  off, 
putting  questions  to  an  outside  passenger,  who  had 
alighted  with  him,  regarding  an  epidemic  disorder, 

♦  Um  Burial. 


THE  OLD  AND  THE  NEW  SCHOOLMASTER.    105 

that  had  been  rife  about  Dalston;  and  which,  my 
friend  assured  him,  had  gone  through  five  or  six 
schools  in  that  neighbourhood.  The  truth  now  flashed 
upon  me,  that  my  companion  was  a  schoolmaster; 
and  that  the  youth,  whom  he  had  parted  from  at  our 
first  acquaintance,  must  have  been  one  of  the  bigger 
boys,  or  the  usher.  —  He  was  evidently  a  kind- 
hearted  man,  who  did  not  seem  so  much  desirous  of 
provoking  discussion  by  the  questions  which  he  put, 
as  of  obtaining  information  at  any  rate.  It  did  not 
appear  that  he  took  any  interest,  either,  in  such 
kind  of  inquiries,  for  their  own  sake ;  but  that  he 
was  in  some  way  bound  to  seek  for  knowledge.  A 
greenish-coloured  coat,  which  he  had  on,  forbade  me 
to  surmise  that  he  was  a  clergyman.  The  adventure 
gave  birth  to  some  reflections  on  the  difference  be- 
tween persons  of  his  profession  in  past  and  present 
times. 

Rest  to  the  souls  of  those  fine  old  Pedagogues ;  the 
breed,  long  since  extinct,  of  the  Lilys,  and  the  Lin- 
acres  :  who  believing  that  all  learning  was  contained 
in  the  languages  which  they  taught,  and  despising 
every  other  acquirement  as  superficial  and  useless, 
came  to  their  task  as  to  a  sport  !  Passing  from  in- 
fancy to  age,  they  dreamed  away  all  their  days  as  in 
a  grammar-school.  Revolving  in  a  perpetual  cycle 
of  declensions,  conjugations,  syntaxes,  and  prosodies  ; 
renewing    constantly    the    occupations    which     had 


^ 


106  THE  OLD  AND  THE  NEW  SCHOOLMASTER. 

charmed  their  studious  childhood ;  rehearsing  con- 
tinually the  part  of  the  past ;  life  must  have  slipped 
from  them  at  last  like  one  day.  They  were  always 
in  their  first  garden,  reaping  harvests  of  their  golden 
time,  among  their  Flori  and  their  Spici-legia ;  in 
Arcadia  still,  but  kings ;  the  ferule  of  their  sway  not 
much  harsher,  but  of  like  dignity  with  that  mild 
sceptre  attributed  to  king  Basileus;  the  Greek  and 
Latin,  their  stately  Pamela  and  their  Philoclea ;  with 
the  occasional  duncery  of  some  untoward  Tyro,  serving 
for  a  refreshing  interlude  of  a  Mopsa,  or  a  clown 
Damaetas  ! 

With  what  a  savour  doth  the  Preface  to  Colet's,  or 
(as  it  is  sometimes  called)  Paul's  Accidence,  set 
forth  !  "  To  exhort  every  man  to  the  learning  of 
grammar,  that  intendeth  to  attain  the  understanding 
of  the  tongues,  wherein  is  contained  a  great  treasury 
of  wisdom  and  knowledge,  it  would  seem  but  vain 
and  lost  labour;  for  so  much  as  it  is  known,  that 
nothing  can  surely  be  ended,  whose  beginning  is 
either  feeble  or  faulty ;  and  no  building  be  perfect, 
whereas  the  foundation  and  ground-work  is  ready  to 
fall,  and  unable  to  uphold  the  burden  of  the  frame." 
How  well  doth  this  stately  preamble  (comparable  to 
those  which  Milton  commendeth  as  "  having  been 
the  usage  to  prefix  to  some  solemn  law,  then  first 
promulgated  by  Solon,  or  Lycurgus")  correspond 
with  and  illustrate  that  pious  zeal  for  conformity,  ex- 


THE  OLD  AND  THE  NEW  SCHOOLMASTER.   10/ 

pressed  in  a  succeeding  clause,  which  would  fence 
about  grammar-rules  with  the  severity  of  faith-arti- 
cles !  —  "as  for  the  diversity  of  grammars,  it  is  well 
profitably  taken  away  by  the  king  majesties  wisdom, 
who  foreseeing  the  inconvenience,  and  favourably 
providing  the  remedie,  caused  one  kind  of  grammar 
by  sundry  learned  men  to  be  diligently  drawn,  and 
so  to  be  set  out,  only  everywhere  to  be  taught  for 
the  use  of  learners,  and  for  the  hurt  in  changing  of 
schoolmaisters."  What  a  gusto  in  that  which  follows  : 
"  wherein  it  is  profitable  that  he  [the  pupil]  can 
orderly  decUne  his  noun,  and  his  verb."     His  noun  ! 

The  fine  dream  is  fading  away  fast ;  and  the  least 
concern  of  a  teacher  in  the  present  day  is  to  incul- 
cate grammar- rules. 

The  modern  schoolmaster  is  expected  to  know  a 
little  of  every  thing,  because  his  pupil  is  required  not 
to  be  entirely  ignorant  of  any  thing.  He  must  be 
superficially,  if  I  may  so  say,  omniscient.  He  is  to 
know  something  of  pneumatics ;  of  chemistry ;  of 
whatever  is  curious,  or  proper  to  excite  the  attention 
of  the  youthful  mind ;  an  insight  into  mechanics  is" 
desirable,  with  a  touch  of  statistics;  the  quaUty  of 
soils,  &c.  botany,  the  constitution  of  his  country, 
cum  multis  aliis.  You  may  get  a  notion  of  some 
part  of  his  expected  duties  by  consulting  the  famous 
Tractate  on  Education  addressed  to  Mr.  Hartlib. 

All  these  things  —  these,  or  the  desire  of  them — • 


I08   THE  OLD  AND  THE  NEW  SCHOOLMASTER. 

he  is  expected  to  instil,  not  by  set  lessons  from  pro- 
fessors, which  he  may  charge  in  the  bill,  but  at 
school-intervals,  as  he  walks  the  streets,  or  saunters 
through  green  fields  (those  natural  instructors),  with 
his  pupils.  The  least  part  of  what  is  expected  from 
him,  is  to  be  done  in  school-hours.  He  must  insin- 
uate knowledge  at  the  mollia  tempora  fandi.  He 
must  seize  every  occasion  —  the  season  of  the  year  — 
>y  the  time  of  the  day  —  a  passing  cloud  —  a  rainbow  — 
a  waggon  of  hay  —  a  regiment  of  soldiers  going  by 
—  to  inculcate  something  useful.  He  can  receive  no 
pleasure  from  a  casual  glimpse  of  Nature,  but  must 
catch  at  it  as  an  object  of  instruction.  He  must 
interpret  beauty  into  the  picturesque.  He  cannot 
relish  a  beggar-man,  or  a  gypsy,  for  thinking  of  the 
suitable  improvement.  Nothing  comes  to  him,  not 
spoiled  by  the  sophisticating  medium  of  moral  uses. 
The  Universe  —  that  Great  Book,  as  it  has  been 
called  —  is  to  him  indeed,  to  all  intents  and  pur- 
poses, a  book,  out  of  which  he  is  doomed  to  read 
tedious  homihes  to  distasting  schoolboys.  —  Vacations 
themselves  are  none  to  him,  he  is  only  rather  worse  off 
than  before;  for  commonly  he  has  some  intrusive 
upper-boy  fastened  upon  him  at  such  times;  some 
cadet  of  a  great  family;  some  neglected  lump  of 
nobility,  or  gentry;  that  he  must  drag  after  him  to 
the  play,  to  the  Panorama,  to  Mr.  Bartley's  Orrery, 
to  the  Panopticon,  or  into  the  country,  to  a  friend's 


THE  OLD  AND  THE  NEW  SCHOOLMASTER.     lOQ 

house,  or  his  favourite  watering-place.  Wherever  he 
goes,  this  uneasy  shadow  attends  him.  A  boy  is  at 
his  board,  and  in  his  path,  and  in  all  his  movements. 
He  is  boy-rid,  sick  of  perpetual  boy. 

Boys  are  capital  felloAvs  in  their  own  way,  among 
their  mates ;  but  they  are  unwholesome  companions 
for  grown  people.  The  restraint  is  felt  no  less  on 
the  one  side,  than  on  the  other.  —  Even  a  child,  that 
"plaything  for  an  hour,"  tires  always.  The  noises 
of  children,  playing  their  own  fancies  —  as  I  now 
hearken  to  them  by  fits,  sporting  on  the  green  be- 
fore my  window,  while  I  am  engaged  in  these  grave 
speculations  at  my  neat  suburban  retreat  at  Shackle- 
well —  by  distance  made  more  sweet  —  inexpressibly 
take  from  the  labour  of  my  task.  It  is  like  writing  to 
music.  They  seem  to  modulate  my  periods.  They 
ought  at  least  to  do  so  —  for  in  the  voice  of  that 
tender  age  there  is  a  kind  of  poetry,  far  unlike  the 
harsh  prose-accents  of  man's  conversation.  —  I  should 
but  spoil  their  sport,  and  diminish  my  own  sympathy 
for  them,  by  mingling  in  their  pastime. 

I  would  not  be  domesticated  all  my  days  with  a 
person  of  very  superior  capacity  to  my  own  —  not, 
if  I  know  myself  at  all,  from  any  considerations  of 
jealousy  or  self-comparison,  for  the  occasional  com- 
munion with  such  minds  has  constituted  the  fortune 
and  felicity  of  my  life  —  but  the  habit  of  too  constant 
intercourse  with  spirits  above  you,  instead  of  raising 


J 


no    THE  OLD  AND  THE  NEW  SCHOOLMASTER. 

you,  keeps  you  down.  Too  frequent  doses  of  ori- 
ginal thinking  from  others,  restrain  what  lesser  por- 
tion of  that  faculty  you  may  possess  of  your  own. 
You  get  entangled  in  another  man's  mind,  even  as 
you  lose  yourself  in  another  man's  grounds.  You 
are  walking  with  a  tall  varlet,  whose  strides  out-pace 
yours  to  lassitude.  The  constant  operation  of  such 
potent  agency  would  reduce  me,  I  am  convinced,  to 
imbecility.  You  may  derive  thoughts  from  others; 
your  way  of  thinking,  the  mould  in  which  your 
thoughts  are  cast,  must  be  your  own.  Intellect  may 
be  imparted,  but  not  each  man's  intellectual  frame.  — 

As  little  as  I  should  wish  to  be  always  thus  dragged 
upwards,  as  little  (or  rather  still  less)  is  it  desirable 
to  be  stunted  downwards  by  your  associates.  The 
trumpet  does  not  more  stun  you  by  its  loudness, 
than  a  whisper  teases  you  by  its  provoking  inaudi- 
bility. 

Why  are  we  never  quite  at  our  ease  in  the  presence 
of  a  schoolmaster?  —  because  we  are  conscious  that 
he  is  not  quite  at  his  ease  in  ours.  He  is  awkward, 
and  out  of  place,  in  the  society  of  his  equals.  He 
comes  like  Gulliver  from  among  his  little  people, 
and  he  cannot  fit  the  stature  of  his  understanding  to 
yours.  He  cannot  meet  you  on  the  square.  He 
wants  a  point  given  him,  like  an  indifferent  whist- 
player.  He  is  so  used  to  teaching,  that  he  wants  to 
be  teaching  you.     One  of  these  professors,  upon  my 


THE  OLD  AND  THE  NEW  SCHOOLMASTER.    1 1 1 

complaining  that  these  little  sketches  of  mine  were 
any  thing  but  methodical,  and  that  I  was  unable  to 
make  them  otherwise,  kindly  offered  to  instruct  me 
in  the  method  by  which  young  gentlemen  in  his 
seminary  were  taught  to  compose  English  themes.  — 
The  jests  of  a  schoolmaster  are  coarse,  or  thin.  They 
do  not  teU  out  of  school.  He  is  under  the  restraint 
of  a  formal  and  didactive  hypocrisy  in  company,  as 
a  clergyman  is  under  a  moral  one.  He  can  no  more 
let  his  intellect  loose  in  society,  than  the  other  can 
his  inclinations.  —  He  is  forlorn  among  his  co-evals ; 
his  juniors  cannot  be  his  friends. 

*'  I  take  blame  to  myself,"  said  a  sensible  man  of 
this  profession,  writing  to  a  friend  respecting  a  youth 
who  had  quitted  his  school  abruptly,  "  that  your 
nephew  was  not  more  attached  to  me.  But  persons 
in  my  situation  are  more  to  be  pitied,  than  can  well 
be  imagined.  We  are  surrounded  by  young,  and, 
consequently,  ardently  affectionate  hearts,  but  we  can 
never  hope  to  share  an  atom  of  their  affections.  The 
relation  of  master  and  scholar  forbids  this.  How 
pleasing  this  must  be  to  you,  how  I  envy  your  feelings, 
my  friends  will  sometimes  say  to  me,  when  they  see 
young  men,  whom  I  have  educated,  return  after  some 
years  absence  from  school,  their  eye  s  shining  with ' 
pleasure,  while  they  shake  hands  with  their  old  mas- 
ter, bringing  a  present  of  game  to  me,  or  a  toy  to 
my  wife,  and  thanking  me  in  the  warmest  terms  for 


112   THE  OLD  AND  THE  NEW  SCHOOLMASTER. 

my  care  of  their  education.  A  holiday  is  begged  for 
the  boys ;  the  house  is  a  scene  of  happiness ;  I,  only, 
am  sad  at  heart.  —  This  fine-spirited  and  warm- 
hearted youth,  who  fancies  he  repays  his  master  with 
gratitude  for  the  care  of  his  boyish  years  —  this  young 
man  —  in  the  eight  long  years  I  watched  over  him 
with  a  parent's  anxiety,  never  could  repay  me  with 
one  look  of  genuine  feeling.  He  was  proud,  when 
I  praised ;  he  was  submissive,  when  I  reproved  him  ; 
but  he  did  never  love  me  —  and  what  he  now  mis- 
takes for  gratitude  and  kindness  for  me,  is  but  the 
pleasant  sensation,  which  all  persons  feel  at  revisiting 
the  scene  of  their  boyish  hopes  and  fears ;  and  the 
seeing  on  equal  terms  the  man  they  were  accustomed 
to  look  up  to  with  reverence.  My  wife,  too,"  this 
interesting  correspondent  goes  on  to  say,  '*  my  once 
darling  Anna,  is  the  wife  of  a  schoolmaster.  —  When 
I  married  her  —  knowing  that  the  wife  of  a  school- 
master ought  to  be  a  busy  notable  creature,  and  fear- 
ing that  my  gentle  Anna  would  ill  supply  the  loss  of 
my  dear  bustling  mother,  just  then  dead,  who  never 
sat  still,  was  in  every  part  of  the  house  in  a  moment, 
and  whom  I  was  obliged  sometimes  to  threaten  to 
fasten  down  in  a  chair,  to  save  her  from  fatiguing 
herself  to  deat'i  —  I  expressed  my  fears,  that  I  was 
bringing  her  into  a  way  of  life  unsuitable  to  her; 
and  she,  who  loved  me  tenderly,  promised  for  my 
sake  to  exert  herself  to  perform  the  duties  of  her  new 


THE  OLD  AND  THE  NEW  SCHOOLMASTER.    113 

situation.  She  promised,  and  she  has  kept  her  word. 
What  wonders  will  not  a  woman's  love  perform  ?  — 
My  house  is  managed  with  a  propriety  and  decorum, 
unknown  in  other  schools;  my  boys  are  well  fed, 
look  healthy,  and  have  every  proper  accommoda- 
tion ;  and  all  this  performed  with  a  careful  economy, 
that  never  descends  to  meanness.  But  I  have  lost 
my  gentle,  helpless  Anna  !  —  When  we  sit  down  to 
enjoy  an  hour  of  repose  after  the  fatigue  of  the  day, 
I  am  compelled  to  listen  to  what  have  been  her  use- 
ful (and  they  are  really  useful)  employments  through 
the  day,  and  what  she  proposes  for  her  to-morrow's 
task.  Her  heart  and  her  features  are  changed  by 
the  duties  of  her  situation.  To  the  boys,  she  never 
appears  other  than  the  master's  wife,  and  she  looks 
up  to  me  as  the  boys'*  master ;  to  whom  all  show  of 
love  and  affection  would  be  highly  improper,  and 
unbecoming  the  dignity  of  her  situation  and  mine. 
Yet  this  my  gratitude  forbids  me  to  hint  to  her. 
For  my  sake  she  submitted  to  be  this  altered  crea- 
ture, and  can  I  reproach  her  for  it?"  —  For  the 
communication  of  this  letter,  I  am  indebted  to  my 
cousin  Bridget. 


VALENTINE'S   DAY. 


Hail  to  thy  returning  festival,  old  Bishop  Valentine ! 
Great  is  thy  name  in  the  rubric,  thou  venerable  Arch- 
flamen  of  Hymen  !  Immortal  Go-between  !  who  and 
what  manner  of  person  art  thou?  Art  thou  but  a 
name^  typifying  the  restless  principle  which  impels 
poor  humans  to  seek  perfection  in  union?  or  wert 
thou  indeed  a  mortal  prelate,  with  thy  tippet  and  thy 
rochet,  thy  apron  on,  and  decent  lawn  sleeves? 
Mysterious  personage !  like  unto  thee,  assuredly, 
there  is  no  other  mitred  father  in  the  calendar ;  not 
Jerome,  nor  Ambrose,  nor  Cyril;  nor  the  consigner 
of  undipt  infants  to  eternal  torments,  Austin,  whom 
all  mothers  hate  ;  nor  he  who  hated  all  mothers, 
Origen ;  nor  Bishop  Bull,  nor  Archbishop  Parker, 
nor  Whitgift.  Thou  comest  attended  with  thousands 
and  ten  thousands  of  little  Loves,  and  the  air  is 

Brush'd  with  the  hiss  of  rustling  wings. 

Singing  Cupids  are  thy  choristers  and  thy  precen- 
tors ;  and  instead  of  the  crosier,  the  mystical  arrow 
is  borne  before  thee. 


VALENTINE'S  DAY.  115 

In  other  words,  this  is  the  day  on  which  those 
charming  Uttle  missives,  ycleped  Valentines,  cross 
and  intercross  each  other  at  every  street  and  turn- 
ing. The  weary  and  all  for-spent  twopenny  postman 
sinks  beneath  a  load  of  delicate  embarrassments,  not 
his  own.  It  is  scarcely  credible  to  what  an  extent 
this  ephemeral  courtship  is  carried  on  in  this  loving 
town,  to  the  great  enrichment  of  porters,  and  detri- 
ment of  knockers  and  bell-wires.  In  these  little 
visual  interpretations,  no  emblem  is  so  common  as 
the  hearty  —  that  little  three-cornered  exponent  of 
all  our  hopes  and  fears,  —  the  bestuck  and  bleeding 
heart ;  it  is  twisted  and  tortured  into  more  allegories 
and  affectations  than  an  opera  hat.  What  authority 
we  have  in  history  or  mythology  for  placing  the  head- 
quarters and  metropolis  of  God  Cupid  in  this  ana- 
tomical seat  rather  than  in  any  other,  is  not  very 
clear ;  but  we  have  got  it,  and  it  will  serve  as  well  as 
any  other.  Else  we  might  easily  imagine,  upon  some 
other  system  which  might  have  prevailed  for  any  thing 
which  our  pathology  knows  to  the  contrary,  a  lover 
addressing  his  mistress,  in  perfect  simplicity  of  feeling, 
"  Madam,  my  liver  and  fortune  are  entirely  at  your 
disposal  j "  or  putting  a  delicate  question,  "  Amanda, 
have  you  a  midriff' io  bestow?"  But  custom  has  set- 
tled these  things,  and  awarded  the  seat  of  sentiment  to 
the  aforesaid  triangle,  while  its  less  fortunate  neigh- 
bours wait  at  animal  and  anatomical  distance. 

Not  many  sounds  in  life,  and  I  include  all  urban 


Il6  VALENTINE'S   DAY. 

and  all  rural  sounds,  exceed  in  interest  a  knock  at  the 
door.  It  "gives  a  very  echo  to  the  throne  where 
Hope  is  seated."  But  its  issues  seldom  answer  to 
this  oracle  within.  It  is  so  seldom  that  just  the 
person  we  want  to  see  comes.  But  of  all  the  clam- 
orous visitations  the  welcomest  in  expectation  is  the 
sound  that  ushers  in,  or  seems  to  usher  in,  a  Valen- 
tine. As  the  raven  himself  was  hoarse  that  an- 
nounced the  fatal  entrance  of  Duncan,  so  the  knock 
of  the  postman  on  this  day  is  light,  airy,  confident, 
and  befitting  one  that  bringeth  good  tidings.  It  is 
less  mechanical  than  on  other  days;  you  will  say, 
"That  is  not  the  post,  I  am  sure."  Visions  of  Love, 
of  Cupids,  of  Hymens  !  —  delightful  eternal  common- 
places, which  "  having  been  will  always  be ;  "  which 
no  school-boy  nor  school- man  can  write  away ;  hav- 
ing your  irreversible  throne  in  the  fancy  and  affec- 
tions—  what  are  your  transports,  when  the  happy 
maiden,  opening  with  careful  finger,  careful  not  to 
break  the  emblematic  seal,  bursts  upon  the  sight  of 
some  well-designed  allegory,  some  type,  some  youth- 
ful fancy,  not  without  verses  — 

Lovers  all, 
A  madrigal, 

or  some  such  device,  not  over  abundant  in  sense  — 
young  Love  disclaims  it,  —  and  not  quite  silly  — 
something  between  wind  and  water,  a  chorus  where 
the  sheep  might  almost  join  the  shepherd,  as  they 
did,  or  as  T  apprehend  they  did,  in  Arcadia. 


VALENTINE'S   DAY.  117 

All  Valentines  are  not  foolish ;  and  I  shall  not 
easily  forget  thine,  my  kind  friend  (if  I  may  have 
leave  to  call  you  so)  E.  B.  —  E.  B.  lived  opposite  a 
young  maiden,  whom  he  had  often  seen,  unseen, 
from  his  parlour  window  in  C — e- street.  She  was 
all  joyousness  and  innocence,  and  just  of  an  age  to 
enjoy  receiving  a  Valentine,  and  just  of  a  temper  to 
bear  the  disappointment  of  missing  one  with  good 
humour.  E.  B.  is  an  artist  of  no  common  powers ; 
in  the  fancy  parts  of  designing,  perhaps  inferior  to 
none ;  his  name  is  known  at  the  bottom  of  many  a 
well  executed  vignette  in  the  way  of  his  profession, 
but  no  further;  for  E.  B.  is  modest,  and  the  world 
meets  nobody  half-way.  E.  B.  meditated  how  he 
could  repay  this  young  maiden  for  many  a  favour 
which  she  had  done  him  unknown;  for  when  a 
kindly  face  greets  us,  though  but  passing  by,  and 
never  knows  us  again,  nor  we  it,  we  should  feel 
it  as  an  obligation ;  and  E.  B.  did.  This  good  artist 
set  himself  at  work  to  please  the  damsel.  It  was 
just  before  Valentine's  day  three  years  since.  He 
wrought,  unseen  and  unsuspected,  a  wondrous  work. 
We  need  not  say  it  was  on  the  finest  gilt  paper  with 
borders  —  full,  not  of  common  hearts  and  heartless 
allegory,  but  all  the  prettiest  stories  of  love  from 
Ovid,  and  older  poets  than  Ovid  (for  E.  B.  is  a 
scholar.)  There  was  Pyramus  and  Thisbe,  and  be 
i.ure  Dido  was,  not  forgot,  nor  Hero  and  Leander, 
and  swans  more  than  sang  in  Cayster,  with  mottos 


Il8  VALENTINE'S   DAY. 

and  fanciful  devices,  such  as  beseemed,  —  a  work  in 
short  of  magic.  Iris  dipt  the  woof.  This  on  Valen- 
tine's eve  he  commended  to  the  all- swallowing  in- 
discriminate orifice — (O  ignoble  trust!) — of  the 
common  post ;  but  the  humble  medium  did  its  duty, 
and  from  his  watchful  stand,  the  next  morning,  he 
saw  the  cheerful  messenger  knock,  and  by  and  by 
the  precious  charge  delivered.  He  saw,  unseen,  the 
happy  girl  unfold  the  Valentine,  dance  about,  clap 
her  hands,  as  one  after  one  the  pretty  emblems  un- 
folded themselves.  She  danced  about,  not  with  light 
love,  or  foolish  expectations,  for  she  had  no  lover; 
or,  if  she  had,  none  she  knew  that  could  have  created 
those  bright  images  which  delighted  her.  It  was 
more  like  some  fairy  present;  a  God-send,  as  our 
familiarly  pious  ancestors  termed  a  benefit  received, 
where  the  benefactor  was  unknown.  It  would  do 
her  no  harm.  It  would  do  her  good  for  ever  after. 
It  is  good  to  love  the  unknown.  I  only  give  this  as 
a  specimen  of  E.  B.  and  his  modest  way  of  doing  a 
concealed  kindness. 

Good-morrow  to  my  Valentine,  sings  poor  Ophe- 
lia ;  and  no  better  wish,  but  with  better  auspices,  we 
wish  to  all  faithful  lovers,  who  are  not  too  wise  to 
despise  old  legends,  but  are  content  to  rank  them^ 
selves  humble  diocesans  of  old  Bishop  Valentine, 
and  his  true  church. 


IMPERFECT   SYMPATHIES. 


1  am  of  a  constitution  so  general,  that  it  consorts  and  sym- 
pathizeth  with  all  things,  I  have  no  antipathy,  or  rather  idio- 
syncracy  in  any  thing.  Those  national  repugnancies  do  not 
touch  me,  nor  do  I  behold  with  prejudice  the  French,  Italian, 
Spaniard,  or  Dutch.  —  Religio  Medici. 


That  the  author  of  the  Religio  Medici,  mounted 
upon  the  airy  stilts  of  abstraction,  conversant  about 
notional  and  conjectural  essences ;  in  whose  catego- 
ries of  Being  the  possible  took  the  upper  hand  of  the 
actual;  should  have  overlooked  the  impertinent  in- 
dividualities of  such  poor  concretions  as  mankind,  is 
not  much  to  be  admired.  It  is  rather  to  be  won- 
dered at,  that  in  the  genus  of  animals  he  should 
have  condescended  to  distinguish  that  species  at  all. 
For  myself —  earth-bound  and  fettered  to  the  scene 
of  my  activities, — 

Standing  on  earth,  not  rapt  above  the  sky, 

I  confess  that  I  do  feel  the  differences  of  mankind, 
national   or  individual,   to  an  unhealthy  excess.      I 


120       IMPERFECT  SYMPATHIES. 

can  look  with  no  indifferent  eye  upon  things  or  per- 
sons. Whatever  is,  is  to  me  a  matter  of  taste  or  dis- 
taste ;  or  when  once  it  becomes  indifferent,  it  begins 
to  be  disrehshing.  I  am,  in  plainer  words,  a  bundle 
of  prejudices  —  made  up  of  likings  and  dislikings  — 
the  veriest  thrall  to  sympathies,  apathies,  antipathies. 
In  a  certain  sense,  I  hope  it  may  be  said  of  me  that 
I  am  a  lover  of  my  species.  I  can  feel  for  all  in- 
differently, but  I  cannot  feel  towards  all  equally. 
The  more  purely-English  word  that  expresses  sym- 
pathy will  better  explain  my  meaning.  I  can  be  a 
friend  to  a  worthy  man,  who  upon  another  account 
cannot  be  my  mate  or  fellow,  I  cannot  like  all 
people  alike*. 

*  I  would  be  understood  as  confining  myself  to  the  subject 
o{  imperfect  sympathies.  To  nations  or  classes  of  men  there 
can  be  no  direct  antipathy.  There  may  be  individuals  born 
and  constellated  so  opposite  to  another  individual  nature,  that 
the  same  sphere  cannot  hold  them,  I  have  met  with  my  moral 
antipodes,  and  can  believe  the  story  of  two  persons  meeting 
(who  never  saw  one  another  before  in  their  lives)  and  instantly 
fighting. 

We  by  proof  find  there  should  be 

'Twixt  man  and  man  such  an  antipathy, 
That  though  he  can  show  no  just  reason  why 
For  any  former  wrong  or  injury, 
Can  neither  find  a  blemish  in  his  fame, 
Nor  aught  in  face  or  feature  justly  blame, 
Can  challenge  or  accuse  him  of  no  evil, 
Yet  notwithstanding  hates  him  as  a  devil. 

The  lines  are  from  old  Heywood's  "  Hierarchic  of  Angels," 
and  he  subjoins  a  curious  story  in  confirmation,  of  a  Spaniard 


IMPERFECT   SYMPATHIES.  121 

I  have  been  trying  all  my  life  to  like  Scotchmen, 
and  am  obliged  to  desist  from  the  experiment  in  de- 
spair. They  cannot  like  me  —  and  in  truth,  I  never 
knew  one  of  that  nation  who  attempted  to  do  it. 
There  is  something  more  plain  and  ingenuous  in 
their  mode  of  proceeding.  We  know  one  another 
at  first  sight.  There  is  an  order  of  imperfect  intel- 
lects (under  which  mine  must  be  content  to  rank) 
which  in  its  constitution  is  essentially  anti-Caledo- 
nian. The  owners  of  the  sort  of  faculties  I  allude  to, 
have  minds  rather  suggestive  than  comprehensive 
They  have  no  pretences  to  much  clearness  or  pre- 
cision in  their  ideas,  or  in  their  manner  of  expressing 
them.  Their  intellectual  wardrobe  (to  confess  fairly) 
has  few  whole  pieces  in  it.  They  are  content  with 
fragments  and  scattered  pieces  of  Truth.  She  pre- 
sents no  full  front  to  them  —  a  feature  or  side-face 
at  the  most.  Hints  and  glimpses,  germs  and  crude 
essays  at  a  system,  is  the  utmost  they  pretend  to. 
They  beat  up  a  httle  game  peradventure  —  and  leave 
it  to  knottier  heads,  more  robust  constitutions,  to 
run  it  down.     The  light  that  lights  them  is  not  steady 

who  attempted  to  assassinate  a  King  Ferdinand  of  Spain,  and 
being  put  to  the  rack  could  give  no  other  reason  for  the  deed 
but  an  inveterate  antipathy  which  he  had  taken  to  the  first 
sight  of  the  King. 


The  cause  which  to  that  act  compell'd  him 

Was,  he  ne'er  loved  him  since  he  first  beheld  him. 


122  IMPERFECT   SYMPATHIES. 

and  polar,  but  mutable  and  shifting :  waxing,  and 
again  waning.  Their  conversation  is  accordingly. 
They  will  throw  out  a  random  word  in  or  out  of 
season,  and  be  content  to  let  it  pass  for  what  it  is 
worth.  They  cannot  speak  always  as  if  they  were 
upon  their  oath  —  but  must  be  understood,  speaking 
or  writing,  with  some  abatement.  They  seldom  wait 
to  mature  a  proposition,  but  e'en  bring  it  to  market 
in  the  green  ear.  They  delight  to  impart  their  de- 
fective discoveries  as  they  arise,  without  waiting  for 
their  full  developement.  They  are  no  systematizers, 
and  would  but  err  more  by  attempting  it.  Their 
minds,  as  I  said  before,  are  suggestive  merely.  The 
brain  of  a  true  Caledonian  (if  I  am  not  mistaken)  is 
constituted  upon  quite  a  different  plan.  His  Min- 
erva is  born  in  panoply.  You  are  never  admitted  to 
see  his  ideas  in  their  growth  —  if,  indeed,  they  do 
grow,  and  are  not  rather  put  together  upon  principles 
of  clock-work.  You  never  catch  his  mind  in  an  un- 
dress. He  never  hints  or  suggests  any  thing,  but 
unlades  his  stock  of  ideas  in  perfect  order  and  com- 
pleteness. He  brings  his  total  wealth  into  company, 
and  gravely  unpacks  it.  His  riches  are  always  about 
him.  He  never  stoops  to  catch  a  glittering  some- 
thing in  your  presence,  to  share  it  with  you,  before 
he  quite  knows  whether  it  be  true  touch  or  not. 
You  cannot  cry  halves  to  any  thing  that  he  finds. 
He  does  not  find,  but  bring.     You  never  witness  his 


IMPERFECT   SYMPATHIES.  1 23 

first  apprehension  of  a  thing.  His  understanding  is 
always  at  its  meridian  —  you  never  see  the  first  dawn, 
the  early  streaks.  —  He  has  no  falterings  of  self- 
suspicion.  Surmises,  guesses,  misgivings,  half-intui- 
tions, semi- consciousnesses,  partial  illuminations,  dim 
instincts,  embryo  conceptions,  have  no  place  in  his 
brain,  or  vocabulary.  The  twilight  of  dubiety  never 
falls  upon  him.  Is  he  orthodox  —  he  has  no  doubts. 
Is  he  an  infidel  —  he  has  none  either.  Between  the 
affirmative  and  the  negative  there  is  no  border-land 
with  him.  You  cannot  hover  with  him  upon  the 
confines  of  truth,  or  wander  in  the  maze  of  a  prob- 
able argument.  He  always  keeps  the  path.  You 
cannot  make  excursions  with  him  —  for  he  sets  you 
right.  His  taste  never  fluctuates.  His  morality 
never  abates.  He  cannot  compromise,  or  understand 
middle  actions.  There  can  be  but  a  right  and  a 
wrong.  His  conversation  is  as  a  book.  His  affir- 
mations have  the  sanctity  of  an  oath.  You  must 
speak  upon  the  square  with  him.  He  stops  a  meta- 
phor like  a  suspected  person  in  an  enemy's  country. 
"  A  healthy  book  !  "  —  said  one  of  his  countrymen  to 
me,  who  had  ventured  to  give  that  appellation  to 
John  Buncle,  —  "  did  I  catch  rightly  what  you  said  ? 
I  have  heard  of  a  man  in  health,  and  of  a  healthy 
state  of  body,  but  I  do  not  see  how  that  epithet  can 
be  properly  applied  to  a  book."  Above  all,  you 
must  beware  of  indirect  expressions  before  a  Cale- 


124  IMPERFECT   SYMPATHIES. 

donian.  Clap  an  extinguisher  upon  your  irony,  if 
you  are  unhappily  blest  with  a  vein  of  it.  Remember 
you  are  upon  your  oath.  I  have  a  print  of  a  graceful 
female  after  Leonardo  da  Vinci,  which  I  was  showing 
off  to  Mr.  *  *  *  *.  After  he  had  examined  it  min- 
utely, I  ventured  to  ask  him  how  he  liked  my  beauty 
(a  foolish  name  it  goes  by  among  my  friends)  — 
when  he  very  gravely  assured  me,  that  "  he  had  con- 
siderable respect  for  my  character  and  talents  "  (so 
he  was  pleased  to  say) ,  "  but  had  not  given  himself 
much  thought  about  the  degree  of  my  personal  pre- 
tensions." The  misconception  staggered  me,  but 
did  not  seem  much  to  disconcert  him.  —  Persons  of 
this  nation  are  particularly  fond  of  affirming  a  truth  — 
which  nobody  doubts.  They  do  not  so  properly 
affirm,  as  annunciate  it.  They  do  indeed  appear  to 
have  such  a  love  of  truth  (as  if,  like  virtue,  it  were 
valuable  for  itself)  that  all  truth  becomes  equally 
valuable,  whether  the  proposition  that  contains  it  be 
new  or  old,  disputed,  or  such  as  is  impossible  to 
become  a  subject  of  disputation.  I  was  present  not 
long  since  at  a  party  of  North  Britons,  where  a  son 
of  Burns  was  expected;  and  happened  to  drop  a 
silly  expression  (in  my  South  British  way),  that  I 
wished  it  were  the  father  instead  of  the  son  —  when 
four  of  them  started  up  at  once  to  inform  me,  that 
"  that  was  impossible,  because  he  was  dead."  An 
impracticable  wish,   it    seems,    was    more    than  they 


IMPERFECT   SYMPATHIES.  1 25 

could  conceive.  Swift  has  hit  off  this  part  of  their 
character,  namely  their  love  of  truth,  in  his  biting 
way,  but  with  an  illiberality  that  necessarily  confines 
the  passage  to  the  margin  *.  The  tediousness  of 
these  people  is  certainly  provoking.  I  wonder  if 
they  ever  tire  one  another  !  —  In  my  early  life  I  had 
a  passionate  fondness  for  the  poetry  of  Burns.  I 
have  sometimes  foolishly  hoped  to  ingratiate  myself 
with  his  countrymen  by  expressing  it.  But  I  have 
always  found  that  a  true  Scot  resents  your  admiration 
of  his  compatriot,  even  more  than  he  would  your 
contempt  of  him.  The  latter  he  imputes  to  your 
"imperfect  acquaintance  with  many  of  the  words 
which  he  uses;"  and  the  same  objection  makes  it 
a  presumption  in  you  to  suppose  that  you  can  ad- 
mire him. — Thomson  they  seem  to  have  forgotten. 
Smollett  they  have  neither  forgotten  nor  forgiven  for 
his  delineation  of  Rory  and  his  companion,  upon 
their  first  introduction  to  our  metropolis.  —  Speak  of 
Smollett  as  a  great  genius,  and  they  will  retort  upon 

*  There  are  some  people  who  think  they  sufficiently  acquit 
themselves,  and  entertain  their  company,  with  relating  facts  of 
no  consequence,  not  at  all  out  of  the  road  of  such  common 
incidents  as  happen  every  day ;  and  this  I  have  observed  more 
frequently  among  the  Scots  than  any  other  nation,  who  are 
very  careful  not  to  omit  the  minutest  circumstances  of  time  or 
place  ;  which  kind  of  discourse,  if  it  were  not  a  little  relieved 
by  the  uncouth  terms  and  phrases,  as  well  as  accent  and  ges- 
ture peculiar  to  that  country,  would  be  hardly  tolerable.— 
Hints  towards  an  Essay  on  Conversation. 


126  IMPERFECT   SYMPATHIES. 

you  Hume's  History  compared  with  his  Continuation 
of  it.  What  if  the  historian  had  continued  Hum- 
phrey CHnker? 

I  have,  in  the  abstract,  no  disrespect  for  Jews. 
They  are  a  piece  of  stubborn  antiquity,  compared 
with  which  Stonehenge  is  in  its  nonage.  They  date 
beyond  the  pyramids.  But  I  should  not  care  to  be 
in  habits  of  famiUar  intercourse  with  any  of  that 
nation.  I  confess  that  I  have  not  the  nerves  to 
enter  their  synagogues.  Old  prejudices  cling  about 
me.  I  cannot  shake  off  the  story  of  Hugh  of  Lin- 
coln. Centuries  of  injury,  contempt,  and  hate,  on 
the  one  side,  —  of  cloaked  revenge,  dissimulation, 
and  hate,  on  the  other,  between  our  and  their 
fathers,  must,  and  ought,  to  affect  the  blood  of  the 
children.  I  cannot  believe  it  can  run  clear  and 
kindly  yet ;  or  that  a  few  fine  words,  such  as  can- 
dour, liberality,  the  light  of  a  nineteenth  century, 
can  close  up  the  breaches  of  so  deadly  a  disunion. 
A  Hebrew  is  nowhere  congenial  to  me.  He  is  least 
distasteful  on  'Change  —  for  the  mercantile  spirit 
levels  all  distinctions,  as  all  are  beauties  in  the  dark. 
I  boldly  confess  that  I  do  not  relish  the  approxima- 
tion of  Jew  and  Christian,  which  has  become  so 
fashionable.  The  reciprocal  endearments  have,  to 
me,  something  hypocritical  and  unnatural  in  them. 
I  do  not  like  to  see  the  Church  and  Synagogue  kiss- 
ing and  congeeing  in  awkward  postures  of  an  affected 


IMPERFECT    SYMPATHIES.  12/ 

civility.  If  they  are  converted,  why  do  they  not  come 
over  to  us  altogether?  Why  keep  up  a  form  of  sepa- 
ration, when  the  life  of  it  is  fled  ?  If  they  can  sit  with 
us  at  table,  why  do  they  keck  at  our  cookery?  I  do 
not  understand  these  half  convertites.  Jews  chris- 
tianizing —  Christians  judaizing  —  puzzle  me.  I  like 
fish  or  flesh.  A  moderate  Jew  is  a  more  confounding 
piece  of  anomaly  than  a  wet  Quaker.     The  spirit  of 

the  synagogue  is  essentially  separative.     B would 

have  been  more  in  keeping  if  he  had  abided  by  the 
faith  of  his  forefathers.     There  is  a  fine  scorn  in  his 

face,   which  nature  meant   to  be  of Christians. 

The  Hebrew  spirit  is  strong  in  him,  in  spite  of  his 
proselytism.  He  cannot  conquer  the  Shibboleth. 
How  it  breaks  out,  when  he  sings,  "  The  Children  of 
Israel  passed  through  the  Red  Sea  !  "  The  auditors, 
for  the  moment,  are  as  Egyptians  to  him,  and  he 
rides  over  our  necks  in  triumph.  There  is  no  mis- 
taking him.  —  B has  a  strong  expression  of  sense 

in  his  countenance,  and  it  is  confirmed  by  his  sing- 
ing. The  foundation  of  his  vocal  excellence  is  sense. 
He  sings  with  understanding,  as  Kemble  delivered 
dialogue.  He  would  sing  the  Commandments,  and 
give  an  appropriate  character  to  each  prohibition. 
His  nation,  in  general,  have  not  over-sensible  coun- 
tenances. How  should  they?  —  but  you  seldom  see 
a  silly  expression  among  them.  Gain,  and  the  pur- 
suit of  gain,  sharpen  a  man's  visage.     I  never  heard 


128  IMPERFECT  SYMPATHIES. 

of  an  idiot  being  born  among  them.  —  Some  admire 
the  Jewish  female- physiognomy.  I  admire  it  —  but 
with  trembHng.  Jael  had  those  full  dark  inscrutable 
eyes. 

In  the  Negro  countenance  you  will  often  meet 
with  strong  traits  of  benignity.  I  have  felt  yearn- 
ings of  tenderness  towards  some  of  these  faces  — 
or  rather  masks  —  that  have  looked  out  kindly  upon 
one  in  casual  encounters  in  the  streets  and  high- 
ways. I  love  what  Fuller  beautifully  calls  —  these 
"images  of  God  cut  in  ebony."  But  I  should 
not  like  to  associate  with  them,  to  share  my  meals 
and  my  good-nights  with  them  —  because  they  are 
black. 

I  love  Quaker  ways,  and  Quaker  worship.  I  ven- 
erate the  Quaker  principles.  It  does  me  good  for 
the  rest  of  the  day  when  I  meet  any  of  their  people 
in  my  path.  When  I  am  ruffled  or  disturbed  by  any 
occurrence,  the  sight,  or  quiet  voice  of  a  Quaker, 
acts  upon  me  as  a  ventilator,  lightening  the  air,  and 
taking  off  a  load  from  the  bosom.  But  I  cannot  like 
the  Quakers  (as  Desdemona  would  say)  "to  live 
with  them."  I  am  all  over  sophisticated  —  with 
humours,  fancies,  craving  hourly  sympathy.  I  must 
have  books,  pictures,  theatres,  chit-chat,  scandal, 
jokes,  ambiguities,  and  a  thousand  whim-whams, 
which  their  simpler  taste  can  do  without.  I  should 
starve  at  their  primitive  banquet.     My  appetites  are 


IMPERFECT   SYMPATHIES.  1 29 

too  high  for  the  salads  which  (according  to  Evelyn) 
Eve  dressed  for  the  angel,  my  gusto  too  excited 

To  sit  a  guest  with  Daniel  at  his  pulse. 

The  indirect  answers  which  Quakers  are  often 
found  to  return  to  a  question  put  to  them  may  be 
explained,  I  think,  without  the  vulgar  assumption, 
that  they  are  more  given  to  evasion  and  equivocat- 
ing than  other  people.  They  naturally  look  to  their 
words  more  carefully,  and  are  more  cautious  of  com- 
mitting themselves.  They  have  a  peculiar  character 
to  keep  up  on  this  head.  They  stand  in  a  manner 
upon  their  veracity.  A  Quaker  is  by  law  exempted 
from  taking  an  oath.  The  custom  of  resorting  to  an 
oath  in  extreme  cases,  sanctified  as  it  is  by  all  re- 
ligious antiquity,  is  apt  (it  must  be  confessed)  to 
introduce  into  the  laxer  sort  of  minds  the  notion  of 
two  kinds  of  truth  —  the  one  applicable  to  the  solemn 
affairs  of  justice,  and  the  other  to  the  common  pro- 
ceedings of  daily  intercourse.  As  tnith  bound  upon 
the  conscience  by  an  oath  can  be  but  truth,  so  in 
the  common  affirmations  of  the  shop  and  the  market- 
place a  latitude  is  expected,  and  conceded  upon 
questions  wanting  this  solemn  covenant.  Something 
less  than  truth  satisfies.  It  is  common  to  hear  a 
person  say,  "  You  do  not  expect  me  to  speak  as  if  I 
were  upon  my  oath."  Hence  a  great  deal  of  incor- 
rectness and  inadvertency,  short  of  falsehood,  creeps 
9 


130  IMPERFECT   SYMPATHIES. 

into  ordinary  conversation ;  and  a  kind  of  secondary 
or  laic-trutli  is  tolerated,  where  clergy-truth  —  oath- 
truth,  by  the  nature  of  the  circumstances,  is  not  re- 
quired. A  Quaker  knows  none  of  this  distinction. 
His  simple  affirmation  being  received,  upon  the  most 
sacred  occasions,  without  any  further  test,  stamps  a 
value  upon  the  words  which  he  is  to  use  upon  the 
most  indifferent  topics  of  life.  He  looks  to  them, 
naturally,  with  more  severity.  You  can  have  of  him 
no  more  than  his  word.  He  knows,  if  he  is  caught 
tripping  in  a  casual  expression,  he  forfeits,  for  him- 
self, at  least,  his  claim  to  the  invidious  exemption. 
He  knows  that  his  syllables  are  weighed  —  and  how 
far  a  consciousness  of  this  particular  watchfulness, 
exerted  against  a  person,  has  a  tendency  to  produce 
indirect  answers,  and  a  diverting  of  the  question  by 
honest  means,  might  be  illustrated,  and  the  practice 
justified,  by  a  more  sacred  example  than  is  proper 
to  be  adduced  upon  this  occasion.  The  admirable 
presence  of  mind,  which  is  notorious  in  Quakers 
upon  all  contingencies,  might  be  traced  to  this  im- 
posed self- watchfulness  —  if  it  did  not  seem  rather 
an  humble  and  secular  scion  of  that  old  stock  of 
religious  constancy,  which  never  bent  or  faltered,  in 
the  Primitive  Friends,  or  gave  way  to  the  winds  of 
persecution,  to  the  violence  of  judge  or  accuser, 
under  trials  and  racking  examinations.  "You  will 
never  be  the  wiser,  if  I  sit  here  answering  your  ques- 


IMPERFECT   SYMPATHIES.  131 

tions  till  midnight,"  said  one  of  those  upright  Justi- 
cers  to  Penn,  who  had  been  putting  law-cases  with  a 
puzzling  subtlety.  "  Thereafter  as  the  answers  may 
be,"  retorted  the  Quaker.  The  astonishing  compo- 
sure of  this  people  is  sometimes  ludicrously  displayed 
in  lighter  instances.  —  I  was  travelling  in  a  stage- 
coach with  three  male  Quakers,  buttoned  up  in  the 
straitest  non-conformity  of  their  sect.  We  stopped 
to  bait  at  Andover,  where  a  meal,  partly  tea  appa- 
ratus, partly  supper,  was  set  before  us.  My  friends 
confined  themselves  to  the  tea-table.  I '  in  my  way 
took  supper.  When  the  landlady  brought  in  the 
bill,  the  eldest  of  my  companions  discovered  that  she 
had  charged  for  both  meals.  This  was  resisted. 
Mine  hostess  was  very  clamorous  and  positive.  Some 
mild  arguments  were  used  on  the  part  of  the  Qua- 
kers, for  which  the  heated  mind  of  the  good  lady 
seemed  by  no  means  a  fit  recipient.  The  guard 
came  in  with  his  usual  peremptory  notice.  The 
Quakers  pulled  out  their  money,  and  formally  ten- 
dered it  —  so  much  for  tea  —  I,  in  humble  imita- 
tion, tendering  mine  —  for  the  supper  which  I  had 
taken.  She  would  not  relax  in  her  demand.  So 
they  all  three  quietly  put  up  their  silver,  as  did  my- 
self, and  marched  out  of  the  room,  the  eldest  and 
gravest  going  first,  with  myself  closing  up  the  rear, 
who  thought  I  could  not  do  better  than  follow  the 
example  of  such  grave  and  warrantable  personages 


132        IMPERFECT  SYMPATHIES. 

We  got  in.  The  steps  went  up.  The  coach  drove 
off.  The  murmurs  of  mine  hostess,  not  very  indis- 
tinctly or  ambiguously  pronounced,  became  after  a 
time  inaudible — and  now  my  conscience,  which  the 
whimsical  scene  had  for  a  while  suspended,  begin- 
ning to  give  some  twitches,  I  waited,  in  the  hope 
that  some  justification  would  be  offered  by  these 
serious  persons  for  the  seeming  injustice  of  their 
conduct.  To  my  great  surprise,  not  a  syllable  was 
dropped  on  the  subject.  They  sate  as  mute  as  at  a 
meeting.  At  length  the  eldest  of  them  broke  si- 
lence, by  inquiring  of  his  next  neighbour,  "Hast 
thee  heard  how  indigos  go  at  the  India  House?" 
and  the  question  operated  as  a  soporific  on  my 
moral  feeling  as  far  as  Exeter. 


WITCHES, 

AND 

OTHER  NIGHT-FEARS. 


We  are  too  hasty  when  we  set  down  our  ancestors  in 
the  gross  for  fools,  for  the  monstrous  inconsistencies 
(as  they  seem  to  us)  involved  in  their  creed  of  witch- 
craft. In  the  relations  of  this  visible  world  we  find 
them  to  have  been  as  rational,  and  shrewd  to  detect 
an  historic  anomaly,  as  ourselves.  But  when  once 
the  invisible  world  was  suppose^  to  be  opened,  and 
the  lawless  agency  of  bad  spirits  assumed,  what  mea- 
sures of  probability,  of  decency,  of  fitness,  or  propor- 
tion —  of  that  which  distinguishes  the  likely  from  the 
palpable  absurd  —  could  they  have  to  guide  them  in 
the  rejection  or  admission  of  any  particular  testi- 
mony ?  —  That  maidens  pined  away,  wasting  inwardly 
as  their  waxen  images  consumed  before  a  fire  —  that 
corn  was  lodged,  and  cattle  lamed  —  that  whirlwinds 
uptore  in  diabolic  revelry  the  oaks  of  the  forest  —  or 
that  spits  and  kettles  only  danced  a  fearful- innocent 
vagary  about  some  rustic's  kitchen  when  no  wind  was 
stirring  —  were  all  equally  probable  where  no  law  of 


134      WITCHES,   AND   OTHER   NIGHT-FEARS. 

agency  was  understood.  That  the  prince  of  the 
powers  of  darkness,  passing  by  the  flower  and  pomp 
of  the  earth,  should  lay  preposterous  siege  to  the  weak 
fantasy  of  indigent  eld  —  has  neither  likelihood  nor 
unlikelihood  a  priori  to  us,  who  have  no  measure  to 
guess  at  his  policy,  or  standard  to  estimate  what  rate 
those  anile  souls  may  fetch  in  the  devil's  market. 
Nor,  when  the  wicked  are  expressly  symbolized  by  a 
goat,  was  it  to  be  wondered  at  so  much,  that  he  should 
come  sometimes  in  that  body,  and  assert  his  meta- 
phor. —  That  the  intercourse  was  opened  at  all  be- 
tween both  worlds  was  perhaps  the  mistake  —  but 
that  once  assumed,  I  see  no  reason  for  disbelieving 
one  attested  story  of  this  nature  more  than  another 
on  the  score  of  absurdity.  There  is  no  law  to  judge 
of  the  lawless,  or  canon  by  which  a  dream  may  be 
criticised. 

I  have  sometimes  thought  that  I  could  not  have 
existed  in  the  days  of  received  witchcraft ;  that  I 
could  not  have  slept  in  a  village  where  one  of  those 
reputed  hags  dwelt.  Our  ancestors  were  bolder  or 
more  obtuse.  Amidst  the  universal  belief  that  these 
wretches  were  in  league  with  the  author  of  all  evil, 
holding  hell  tributary  to  their  muttering,  no  simple 
Justice  of  the  Peace  seems  to  have  scrupled  issuing, 
or  silly  Headborough  serving,  a  warrant  upon  them 
—  as  if  they  should  subpoena  Satan  !  —  Prospero  in 
his  boat,  with  his  books  and  wand  about  him,  suffers 


WITCHES,  AND  OTHER  NIGHT-FEARS.     1 35 

himself  to  be  conveyed  away  at  the  mercy  of  his 
enemies  to  an  unknown  island.  He  might  have 
raised  a  storm  or  two,  we  think,  on  the  passage.  His 
acquiescence  is  in  exact  analogy  to  the  non- resistance 
of  witches  to  the  constituted  powers.  —  What  stops 
the  Fiend  in  Spenser  from  tearing  Guyon  to  pieces  — 
or  who  had  made  it  a  condition  of  his  prey,  that 
Guyon  must  take  assay  of  the  glorious  bait  —  we  have 
no  guess.  We  do  not  know  the  laws  of  that  country. 
From  my  childhood  I  was  extremely  inquisitive 
about  witches  and  witch-stories.  My  maid,  and  more 
legendary  aunt,  supplied  me  with  good  store.  But  I 
shall  mention  the  accident  which  directed  my  curi- 
osity originally  into  this  channel.  In  my  father's 
book-closet,  the  History  of  the  Bible,  by  Stackhouse, 
occupied  a  distinguished  station.  The  pictures  with 
which  it  abounds  —  one  of  the  ark,  in  particular,  and 
another  of  Solomon's  temple,  delineated  with  all  the 
fidelity  of  ocular  admeasurement,  as  if  the  artist  had 
been  upon  the  spot  —  attracted  my  childish  attention. 
There  was  a  picture,  too,  of  the  Witch  raising  up 
Samuel,  which  I  wish  that  I  had  never  seen.  We 
shall  come  to  that  hereafter.  Stackhouse  is  in  two 
huge  tomes  —  and  there  was  a  pleasure  in  removing 
folios  of  that  magnitude,  which,  with  infinite  straining, 
was  as  much  as  I  could  manage,  from  the  situation 
which  they  occupied  upon  an  upper  shelf.  I  have 
not  met  with  the  work  from  that  time  to  this,  but  I 


136    WITCHES,  AND   OTHER    NIGHT-FEARS. 

remember  it  consisted  of  Old  Testament  stories, 
orderly  set  down,  with  the  objection  appended  to  each 
story,  and  the  solution  of  the  objection  regularly 
tacked  to  that.  The  objection  was  a  summary  of 
whatever  difficulties  had  been  opposed  to  the  credi- 
bility of  the  history,  by  the  shrewdness  of  ancient  or 
modern  infidelity,  drawn  up  with  an  almost  compli- 
mentary excess  of  candour.  The  solution  was  brief, 
modest,  and  satisfactory.  The  bane  and  antidote 
were  both  before  you.  To  doubts  so  put,  and  so 
quashed,  there  seemed  to  be  an  end  for  ever.  The 
dragon  lay  dead,  for  the  foot  of  the  veriest  babe  to 
trample  on.  But  —  like  as  was  rather  feared  than 
realised  from  that  slain  monster  in  Spenser  —  from 
the  womb  of  those  crushed  errors  young  dragonets 
would  creep,  exceeding  the  prowess  of  so  tender  a 
Saint  George  as  myself  to  vanquish.  The  habit  of 
expecting  objections  to  every  passage,  set  me  upon 
starting  more  objections,  for  the  glory  of  finding  a 
solution  of  my  own  for  them.  I  became  staggered 
and  perplexed,  a  sceptic  in  long  coats.  The  pretty 
Bible  stories  which  I  had  read,  or  heard  read  in 
church,  lost  their  purity  and  sincerity  of  impression, 
and  were  turned  into  so  many  historic  or  chronologic 
theses  to  be  defended  against  whatever  impugners. 
I  was  not  to  disbeheve  them,  but  —  the  next  thing  to 
that  —  I  was  to  be  quite  sure  that  some  one  or  other 
would  or  had  disbelieved  them.     Next  to  making  a 


WITCHES,  AND   OTHER  NIGHT-FEARS.     137 

child  an  infidel,  is  the  letting  him  know  that  there  are 
infidels  at  all.  Credulity  is  the  man's  weakness,  but 
the  child's  strength.  O,  how  ugly  sound  scriptural 
doubts  from  the  mouth  of  a  babe  and  a  suckling  !  — 
I  should  have  lost  myself  in  these  mazes,  and  have 
pined  away,  I  think,  with  such  unfit  sustenance  as 
these  husks  afforded,  but  for  a  fortunate  piece  of  ill- 
fortune,  which  about  this  time  befel  me.  Turning 
over  the  picture  of  the  ark  with  too  much  haste,  I 
unhappily  made  a  breach  in  its  ingenious  fabric  — 
driving  my  inconsiderate  fingers  right  through  the 
two  larger  quadrupeds  —  the  elephant,  and  the  camel 
—  that  stare  (as  well  they  might)  out  of  the  two  last 
windows  next  the  steerage  in  that  unique  piece  of 
naval  architecture.  Stackhouse  was  henceforth  locked 
up,  and  became  an  interdicted  treasure.  With  the 
book,  the  objections  and  solutions  gradually  cleared 
out  of  my  head,  and  have  seldom  returned  since  in 
any  force  to  trouble  me.  —  But  there  was  one  im- 
pression which  I  had  imbibed  from  Stackhouse,  which 
no  lock  or  bar  could  shut  out,  and  which  was  destined 
to  try  my  childish  nerves  rather  more  seriously. — 
That  detestable  picture  ! 

I  was  dreadfully  alive  to  nervous  terrors.  The 
night-time  soUtude,  and  the  dark,  were  my  hell.  The 
sufferings  I  endured  in  this  nature  would  justify  the 
expression.  I  never  laid  my  head  on  my  pillow,  I 
suppose,  from  the  fourth  to  the  seventh  or  eighth  year 


138     WITCHES,   AND   OTHER   NIGHT-FEARS. 

of  my  life  —  so  far  as  memory  serves  in  things  so  long 
ago  —  without  an  assurance,  which  realised  its  own 
prophecy,  of  seeing  some  frightful  spectre.  Be  old 
Stackhouse  then  acquitted  in  part,  if  I  say,  that  to 
his  picture  of  the  Witch  raising  up  Samuel  —  (O  that 
old  man  covered  with  a  mantle  !)  I  owe  —  not  my 
midnight  terrors,  the  hell  of  my  infancy  —  but  the 
shape  and  manner  of  their  visitation.  It  was  he  who 
dressed  up  for  me  a  hag  that  nightly  sate  upon  my 
pillow  —  a  sure  bed-fellow,  when  my  aunt  or  my  maid 
was  far  from  me.  All  day  long,  while  the  book  was 
permitted  me,  I  dreamed  waking  over  his  delineation, 
and  at  night  (if  I  may  use  so  bold  an  expression) 
awoke  into  sleep,  and  found  the  vision  true.  I  durst 
not,  even  in  the  day-light,  once  enter  the  chamber 
where  I  slept,  without  my  face  turned  to  the  window, 
aversely  from  the  bed  where  my  witch-ridden  pillow 
was.  —  Parents  do  not  know  what  they  do  when  they 
leave  tender  babes  alone  to  go  to  sleep  in  the  dark. 
The  feeling  about  for  a  friendly  arm  —  the  hoping  for 
a  familiar  voice  —  when  they  wake  screaming  —  and 
find  none  to  soothe  them  —  what  a  terrible  shaking  it 
is  to  their  poor  nerves  !  The  keeping  them  up  till 
midnight,  through  candle-light  and  the  unwholesome 
hours,  as  they  are  called,  —  would,  I  am  satisfied,  in 
a  medical  point  of  view,  prove  the  better  caution.  — 
That  detestable  picture,  as  I  have  said,  gave  the 
fashion  to  my  dreams  —  if  drearns  they  were  —  for 


WITCHES,   AND    OTHER   NIGHT-FEARS.     1 39 

the  scene  of  them  was  invariably  the  room  in  which  I 

lay.     Had  I  never  met  with  the  picture,  the  fears 

would    have    come    self-pictured    in   some    shape  or 

other  — 

Headless  bear,  black  man,  or  ape  — 

but,  as  it  was,  my  imaginations  took  that  form.  —  It 
is  not  book,  or  picture,  or  the  stories  of  foolish  ser- 
vants, which  create  these  terrors  in  children.  They 
can  at  most  but  give  them  a  direction.  Dear  little 
T.  H.  who  of  all  children  has  been  brought  up  with 
the  most  scrupulous  exclusion  of  every  taint  of  super- 
stition —  v/ho  was  never  allowed  to  hear  of  goblin  or 
apparition,  or  scarcely  to  be  told  of  bad  men,  or  to 
read  or  hear  of  any  distressing  story  —  finds  all  this 
world  of  fear,  from  which  he  has  been  so  rigidly  ex- 
cluded ab  extra,  in  his  own  **  thick-coming  fancies  ;  " 
and  from  his  little  midnight  pillow,  this  nurse-child  of 
optimism  will  start  at  shapes,  unborrowed  of  tradition, 
in  sweats  to  which  the  reveries  of  the  cell-damned 
murderer  are  tranquillity. 

Gorgons,  and  Hydras,  and  Chimseras  —  dire  stories 
of  Celaeno  and  the  Harpies  —  may  reproduce  them- 
selves in  the  brain  of  superstition  —  but  they  were 
there  before.  They  are  transcripts,  types  —  the  arche- 
types are  in  us,  and  eternal.  How  else  should  the 
recital  of  that,  which  we  know  in  a  waking  sense  to 
be  false,  come  to  affect  us  at  all  ?  —  or 

Names,  whose  sense  we  see  not. 

Fray  us  with  things  that  be  not  ? 


140     WITCHES,  AND   OTHER   NIGHT-FEARS. 

Is  it  that  we  naturally  conceive  terror  from  such 
objects,  considered  in  their  capacity  of  being  able  to 
inflict  upon  us  bodily  injury  ?  —  O,  least  of  all !  These 
terrors  are  of  older  standing.  They  date  beyond 
body  —  or,  without  the  body,  they  would  have  been 
the  same.  All  the  cruel,  tormenting,  defined  devils 
in  Dante  —  tearing,  mangling,  choking,  stifling,  scorch- 
ing demons  —  are  they  one  half  so  fearful  to  the 
spirit  of  a  man,  as  the  simple  idea  of  a  spirit  unem- 
bodied  following  him  — 

Like  one  that  on  a  lonesome  road 
Doth  walk  in  fear  and  dread, 
And  having  once  turn'd  round,  walks  on, 
And  turns  no  more  his  head  ; 
Because  he  knows  a  frightful  fiend 
Doth  close  behind  him  tread  *. 

That  the  kind  of  fear  here  treated  of  is  purely 
spiritual  —  that  it  is  strong  in  proportion  as  it  is  ob- 
jectless upon  earth  —  that  it  predominates  in  the 
period  of  sinless  infancy  —  are  difficulties,  the  solu- 
tion of  which  might  afford  some  probable  insight  into 
our  ante-mundane  condition,  and  a  peep  at  least  into 
the  shadow-land  of  pre-existence. 

My  night- fancies  have  long  ceased  to  be  afflictive. 
I  confess  an  occasional  night-mare  ;  but  I  do  not,  as 
in  early  youth,  keep  a  stud  of  them.  Fiendish  faces, 
with  the  extinguished  taper,  will  come  and  look  at 

*  Mr.  Coleridge's  Ancient  Mariner. 


WITCHES,   AND   OTHER   NIGHT-FEARS.     14I 

me ;  but  I  know  them  for  mockeries,  even  while  I 
cannot  elude  their  presence,  and  I  fight  and  grapple 
with  them.  For  the  credit  of  my  imagination,  I  am 
almost  ashamed  to  say  how  tame  and  prosaic  my 
dreams  are  grown.  They  are  never  romantic,  seldom 
even  rural.  They  are  of  architecture  and  of  buildings 
—  cities  abroad,  which  I  have  never  seen,  and  hardly 
have  hope  to  see.  I  have  traversed,  for  the  seeming 
length  of  a  natural  day,  Rome,  Amsterdam,  Paris, 
Lisbon  —  their  churches,  palaces,  squares,  market- 
places, shops,  suburbs,  ruins,  with  an  inexpressible 
sense  of  delight  —  a  map-Hke  distinctness  of  trace  — 
and  a  day-light  vividness  of  vision,  that  was  all  but 
beings  awake.  —  I  have  formerly  travelled  among  the 
Westmoreland  fells  —  my  highest  Alps,  —  but  they  are 
objects  too  mighty  for  the  grasp  of  my  dreaming 
recognition ;  and  I  have  again  and  again  awoke  with 
ineffectual  struggles  of  the  inner  eye,  to  make  out  a 
shape  in  any  way  whatever,  of  Helvellyn.  Methought 
I  was  in  that  country,  but  the  mountains  were  gone. 
The  poverty  of  my  dreams  mortifies  me.  There  is 
Coleridge,  at  his  will  can  conjure  up  icy  domes,  and 
pleasure- houses  for  Kubla  Khan,  and  Abyssinian 
maids,  and  songs  of  Abara,  and  caverns. 

Where  Alph,  the  sacred  river,  runs, 

to  solace  his  night  solitudes- — when  I  cannot  muster 
a   fiddle.     Barry   Cornwall   has   his   tritons   and   his 


142      WITCHES,   AND   OTHER  NIGHT-FEARS. 

nereids  gamboling  before  him  in  nocturnal  visions, 
and  proclaiming  sons  born  to  Neptune — when  my 
stretch  of  imaginative  activity  cln  hardly,  in  the  night 
season,  raise  up  the  ghost  of  a  fish-wife.  To  set  my 
failures  in  somewhat  a  mortifying  light  —  it  was  after 
reading  the  noble  Dream  of  this  poet,  that  my  fancy 
ran  strong  upon  these  marine  spectra ;  and  the  poor 
plastic  power,  such  as  it  is,  within  me  set  to  work,  to 
humour  my  folly  in  a  sort  of  dream  that  very  night. 
Methought  I  was  upon  the  ocean  billows  at  some  sea 
nuptials,  riding  and  mounted  high,  with  the  customary 
train  sounding  their  conchs  before  me,  (I  myself,  you 
may  be  sure,  the  leading  god,)  and  jollily  we  went 
careering  over  the  main,  till  just  where  Ino  Leucothea 
should  have  greeted  me  (I  think  it  was  Ino)  with  a 
white  embrace,  the  billows  gradually  subsiding,  fell  from 
a  sea-roughness  to  a  sea-calm,  and  thence  to  a  river- 
motion,  and  that  river  (as  happens  in  the  famihariza- 
tion  of  dreams)  was  no  other  than  the  gentle  Thames, 
which  landed  me,  in  the  wafture  of  a  placid  wave  or 
two,  alone,  safe  and  inglorious,  somewhere  at  the  foot 
of  Lambeth  palace. 

The  degree  of  the  soul's  creativeness  in  sleep  might 
furnish  no  whimsical  criterion  of  the  quantum  of  poet- 
ical faculty  resident  in  the  same  soul  waking.  An  old 
gentleman,  a  friend  of  mine,  and  a  humorist,  used  to 
carry  this  notion  so  far,  that  when  he  saw  any  stripling 
of  his  acquaintance  ambitious  of  becoming  a  poet, 


WITCHES,  AND   OTHER   NIGHT-FEARS.     1 43 

his  first  question  would  be,  —  "  Young  man,  what 
sort  of  dreams  have  you?  "  I  have  so  much  faith  in 
my  old  friend's  theory,  that  when  I  feel  that  idle  vein 
returning  upon  me,  I  presently  subside  into  my  proper 
element  of  prose,  remembering  those  eluding  nereids, 
and  that  inauspicious  inland  landing. 


MY  RELATIONS. 


I  AM  arrived  at  that  point  of  life,  at  which  a  man  may 
account  it  a  blessing,  as  it  is  a  singularity,  if  he  have 
either  of  his  parents  surviving.  I  have  not  that  felicity 
—  and  sometimes  think  feelingly  of  a  passage  in 
Browne's  Christian  Morals,  where  he  speaks  of  a  man 
that  hath  lived  sixty  or  seventy  years  in  the  world. 
*^  In  such  a  compass  of  time,"  he  says,  *'  a  man  may 
have  a  close  apprehension  what  it  is  to  be  forgotten, 
when  he  hath  lived  to  find  none  who  could  remember 
his  father,  or  scarcely  the  friends  of  his  youth,  and 
may  sensibly  see  with  what  a  face  in  no  long  time 
Oblivion  will  look  upon  himself." 

I  had  an  aunt,  a  dear  and  good  one.  She  was  one 
whom  single  blessedness  had  soured  to  the  world. 
She  often  used  to  say,  that  I  was  the  only  thing  in  it 
which  she  loved  ;  and,  when  she  thought  I  was  quitting 
it,  she  grieved  over  me  with  mother's  tears.  A  par- 
tiality quite  so  exclusive  my  reason  cannot  altogether 
approve.  She  was  from  morning  till  night  poring 
over   good    books,    and    devotional    exercises.      Her 


MY  RELATIONS.  145 

favourite  volumes  were  Thomas  a  Kempis,  in  Stan- 
hope's Translation ;  and  a  Roman  Catholic  Prayer 
Book,  with  the  matins  and  complines  regulariy  set 
down,  —  terms  which  I  was  at  that  time  too  young  to 
understand.  She  persisted  in  reading  them,  although 
admonished  daily  concerning  their  Papistical  ten- 
dency ;  and  went  to  church  every  Sabbath,  as  a  good 
Protestant  should  do.  These  were  the  only  books 
she  studied ;  though,  I  think,  at  one  period  of  her 
life,  she  told  me,  she  had  read  with  great  satisfaction 
the  Adventures  of  an  Unfortunate  Young  Nobleman. 
Finding  the  door  of  the  chapel  in  Essex-street  open 
one  day  —  it  was  in  the  infancy  of  that  heresy  —  she 
went  in,  liked  the  sermon,  and  the  manner  of  worship, 
and  frequented  it  at  intervals  for  some  time  after. 
She  came  not  for  doctrinal  points,  and  never  missed 
them.  With  some  little  asperities  in  her  constitution, 
which  I  have  above  hinted  at,  she  was  a  steadfast, 
friendly  being,  and  a  fine  old  Christian.  She  was  a 
woman  of  strong  sense,  and  a  shrewd  mind  —  extra- 
ordinary at  a  repartee ;  one  of  the  few  occasions  of 
her  breaking  silence  —  else  she  did  not  much  value 
wit.  The  only  secular  employment  I  remember  to 
have  seen  her  engaged  in,  was,  the  splitting  of  French 
beans,  and  dropping  them  into  a  China  basin  of  fair 
water.  The  odour  of  those  tender  vegetables  to  this 
day  comes  back  upon  my  sense,  redolent  of  soothing 
recollections.  Certainly  it  is  the  most  delicate  of 
culinary  operations. 


146  MY  RELATIONS. 

Male  aunts,  as  somebody  calls  them,  I  had  none  — 
to  remember.  By  the  uncle's  side  I  may  be  said  to 
have  been  born  an  orphan.  Brother,  or  sister,  I  never 
had  any  —  to  know  them.  A  sister,  I  think,  that  should 
have  been  Elizabeth,  died  in  both  our  infancies. 
What  a  comfort,  or  what  a  care,  may  I  not  have 
missed  in  her  !  —  But  I  have  cousins,  sprinkled  about 
in  Hertfordshire  —  besides  two,  with  whom  I  have 
been  all  my  life  in  habits  of  the  closest  intimacy,  and 
whom  I  may  term  cousins  par  excellence.  These 
are  James  and  Bridget  Elia.  They  are  older  than 
myself  by  twelve,  and  ten,  years  ;  and  neither  of  them 
seems  disposed,  in  matters  of  advice  and  guidance,  to 
waive  any  of  the  prerogatives  which  primogeniture 
confers.  May  they  continue  still  in  the  same  mind ; 
and  when  they  shall  be  seventy-five,  and  seventy-three, 
years  old  (I  cannot  spare  them  sooner),  persist  in 
treating  me  in  my  grand  climacteric  precisely  as  a 
stripling,  or  younger  brother  ! 

James  is  an  inexplicable  cousin.  Nature  hath  her 
unities,  which  not  every  critic  can  penetrate ;  or,  if 
we  feel,  we  cannot  explain  them.  The  pen  of  Yorick, 
and  of  none  since  his,  could  have  drawn  J.  E.  entire 
—  those  fine  Shandian  lights  and  shades,  which  make 
up  his  story.  I  must  limp  after  in  my  poor  antithet- 
ical manner,  as  the  fates  have  given  me  grace  and 
talent.  J.  E.  then  —  to  the  eye  of  a  common  observer 
at  least  —  seemeth  made  up  of  contradictory  princi- 


MY   RELATIONS.  I47 

pies.  —  The  genuine  child  of  impulse,  the  frigid  phi- 
losopher of  prudence  —  the  phlegm  of  my  cousin's 
doctrine  is  invariably  at  war  with  his  temperament, 
which  is  high  sanguine.  With  always  some  fire-new 
project  in  his  brain,  J.  E.  is  the  systematic  opponent 
of  innovation,  and  crier  down  of  every  thing  that  has 
not  stood  the  test  of  age  and  experiment.  With  a 
hundred  fine  notions  chasing  one  another  hourly  in 
his  fancy,  he  is  startled  at  the  least  approach  to  the 
romantic  in  others ;  and,  determined  by  his  own  sense 
in  every  thing,  commends  you  to  the  guidance  of 
common  sense  on  all  occasions.  —  With  a  touch  of 
the  eccentric  in  all  which  he  does,  or  says,  he  is  only 
anxious  that  you  should  not  commit  yourself  by  doing 
any  thing  absurd  or  singular.  On  my  once  letting 
slip  at  table,  that  I  was  not  fond  of  a  certain  popular 
dish,  he  begged  me  at  any  rate  not  to  say  so  —  for 
the  world  would  think  me  mad.  He  disguises  a  pas- 
sionate fondness  for  works  of  high  art  (whereof  he 
hath  amassed  a  choice  collection),  under  the  pretext 
of  buying  only  to  sell  again  —  that  his  enthusiasm 
may  give  no  encouragement  to  yours.  Yet,  if  it  were 
so,  why  does  that  piece  of  tender,  pastoral  Domin- 
ichino  hang  still  by  his  wall  ?  —  is  the  ball  of  his  sight 
much  more  dear  to  him  ?  —  or  what  picture-dealer 
can  talk  like  him? 

Whereas  mankind  in  general  are  observed  to  warp 
their  speculative  conclusions   to    the    bent   of  their 


148  MY  RELATIONS. 

individual  humours,  his  theories  are  sure  to  be  in 
diametrical  opposition  to  his  constitution.  He  is 
courageous  as  Charles  of  Sweden,  upon  instinct ;  chary 
of  his  person,  upon  principle,  as  a  travelling  Quaker.  — 
He  has  been  preaching  up  to  me,  all  my  life,  the 
doctrine  of  bowing  to  the  great  —  the  necessity  of 
forms,  and  manner,  to  a  man's  getting  on  in  the 
world.  He  himself  never  aims  at  either,  that  I  can 
discover,  —  and  has  a  spirit,  that  would  stand  upright 
in  the  presence  of  the  Cham  of  Tartary.  It  is  pleasant 
to  hear  him  discourse  of  patience  —  extolling  it  as  the 
truest  wisdom  —  and  to  see  him  during  the  last  seven 
minutes  that  his  dinner  is  getting  ready.  Nature  never 
ran  up  in  her  haste  a  more  restless  piece  of  workman- 
ship than  when  she  moulded  this  impetuous  cousin  — 
and  Art  never  turned  out  a  more  elaborate  orator 
than  he  can  display  himself  to  be,  upon  his  favourite 
topic  of  the  advantages  of  quiet,  and  contentedness 
in  the  state,  whatever  it  be,  that  we  are  placed  in. 
He  is  triumphant  on  this  theme,  when  he  has  you  safe 
in  one  of  those  short  stages  that  ply  for  the  western 
road,  in  a  very  obstructing  manner,  at  the  foot  of 
John  Murray's  street  —  where  you  get  in  when  it  is 
empty,  and  are  expected  to  wait  till  the  vehicle  hath 
completed  her  just  freight  —  a  trying  three  quarters 
of  an  hour  to  some  people.  He  wonders  at  your 
fidgetiness,  —  "  where  could  we  be  better  than  we  are, 
thus   sitting,    thus    consulting  ?  ^^ — "prefers,    for    his 


MY   RELATIONS.  I49 

part,  a  state  of  rest  to  locomotion,"  —  with  an  eye  all 
the  while  upon  the  coachman  —  till  at  length,  waxing 
out  of  all  patience,  at  your  want  of  it,  he  breaks  out 
into  a  pathetic  remonstrance  at  the  fellow  for  detain- 
ing us  so  long  over  the  time  which  he  had  professed, 
and  declares  peremptorily,  that  "  the  gentleman  in  the 
coach  is  determined  to  get  out,  if  he  does  not  drive 
on  that  instant." 

Very  quick  at  inventing  an  argument,  or  detecting 
a  sophistry,  he  is  incapable  of  attending  you  in  any 
chain  of  arguing.  Indeed  he  makes  wild  work  with 
logic ;  and  seems  to  jump  at  most  admirable  conclu- 
sions by  some  process,  not  at  all  akin  to  it.  Conso- 
nantly enough  to  this,  he  hath  been  heard  to  deny, 
upon  certain  occasions,  that  there  exists  such  a  faculty 
at  all  in  man  as  reason ;  and  wondereth  how  man 
came  first  to  have  a  conceit  of  it  —  enforcing  his 
negation  with  all  the  might  of  reasoning  he  is  master 
of.  He  has  some  speculative  notions  against  laughter, 
and  will  maintain  that  laughing  is  not  natural  to  him 
—  when  peradventure  the  next  moment  his  lungs  shall 
crow  like  Chanticleer.  He  says  some  of  the  best 
things  in  the  world  —  and  declareth  that  wit  is  his 
aversion.  It  was  he  who  said,  upon  seeing  the  Eton 
boys  at  play  in  their  grounds  —  What  a  pity  to  think, 
that  these  fine  ingenuous  lads  in  a  few  years  will  all  be 
changed  into  frivolous  Members  of  Parliament ! 

His  youth  was  fiery,  glowing,  tempestuous  —  and 


150  MY    RELATIONS. 

in  age  he  discovereth  no  symptom  of  cooling.  This 
is  that  which  I  admire  in  him.  I  hate  people  who 
meet  Time  half-way.  I  am  for  no  compromise  with 
that  inevitable  spoiler.  While  he  lives,  J.  E.  will 
take  his  swing.  —  It  does  me  good,  as  I  walk  towards 
the  street  of  my  daily  avocation,  on  some  fine  May 
morning,  to  meet  him  marching  in  a  quite  opposite 
direction,  with  a  jolly  handsome  presence,  and  shin- 
ing sanguine  face,  that  indicates  some  purchase  in 
his  eye  —  a  Claude  —  or  a  Hobbima  —  for  much  of 
his  enviable  leisure  is  consumed  at  Christie's,  and 
Phillips's  —  or  where  not,  to  pick  up  pictures,  and 
such  gauds.  On  these  occasions  he  mostly  stoppeth 
me,  to  read  a  short  lecture  on  the  advantage  a  person 
like  me  possesses  above  himself,  in  having  his  time 
occupied  with  business  which  he  must  do  —  assureth 
me  that  he  often  feels  it  hang  heavy  on  his  hands  — 
wishes  he  had  fewer  holidays  —  and  goes  off —  West- 
ward Ho  !  —  chanting  a  tune,  to  Pall  Mall  —  perfectly 
convinced  that  he  has  convinced  me  —  while  I  proceed 
in  my  opposite  direction  tuneless. 

It  is  pleasant  again  to  see  this  Professor  of  Indiffer- 
ence doing  the  honours  of  his  new  purchase,  when  he 
has  fairly  housed  it.  You  must  view  it  in  every  light, 
till  he  has  found  the  best  —  placing  it  at  this  distance, 
and  at  that,  but  always  suiting  the  focus  of  your  sight 
to  his  own.  You  must  spy  at  it  through  your  fingers, 
to  catch  the  aerial  perspective  —  though  you  assure 


MY   RELATIONS.  151 

him  that  to  you  the  landscape  shows  much  more 
agreeable  without  that  artifice.  Wo  be  to  the  luckless 
wight,  who  does  not  only  not  respond  to  his  rapture,  but 
who  should  drop  an  unseasonable  intimation  of  pre- 
ferring one  of  his  anterior  bargains  to  the  present !  — 
The  last  is  always  his  best  hit  —  his  "  Cynthia  of  the 
minute."  —  Alas  !  how  many  a  mild  Madonna  have  I 
known  to  come  in  —  a  Raphael! — keep  its  ascen- 
dancy for  a  few  brief  moons  —  then,  after  certain  in- 
termedial degradations,  from  the  front  drawing-room 
to  the  back  gallery,  thence  to  the  dark  parlour, — 
adopted  in  turn  by  each  of  the  Carracci,  under  suc- 
cessive lowering  ascriptions  of  fiUation,  mildly  break- 
ing its  fall  —  consigned  to  the  oblivious  lumber-room, 
go  out  at  last  a  Lucca  Giordano,  or  plain  Carlo 
Maratti !  —  which  things  when  I  beheld  —  musing 
upon  the  chances  and  mutabilities  of  fate  below,  hath 
made  me  to  reflect  upon  the  altered  condition  of  great 
personages,  or  that  woful  Queen  of  Richard  the 
Second  — 

set  forth  in  pomp, 

She  came  adorned  hither  like  sweet  May. 
Sent  back  like  Hollowmass  or  shortest  day. 

With  great  love  for  you^  J.  E.  hath  but  a  limited 
sympathy  with  what  you  feel  or  do.  He  lives  in  a 
world  of  his  own,  and  makes  slender  guesses  at  what 
passes  in  your  mind.     He  never  pierces  the  marrow  of 


152  MY   RELATIONS. 

your  habits.  He  will  tell  an  old  established  play-goer, 
that  Mr.  Such-a-one,  of  So-and-so  (naming  one  of 
the  theatres) ,  is  a  very  lively  comedian  —  as  a  piece 
of  news !  He  advertised  me  but  the  other  day  of 
some  pleasant  green  lanes  which  he  had  found  out  for 
me,  knowing  me  to  be  a  great  walker,  in  my  own  im- 
mediate vicinity  —  who  have  haunted  the  identical 
spot  any  time  these  twenty  years  !  —  He  has  not 
much  respect  for  that  class  of  feelings  which  goes  by 
the  name  of  sentimental.  He  applies  the  definition 
of  real  evil  to  bodily  sufferings  exclusively  —  and  re- 
jecteth  all  others  as  imaginary.  He  is  affected  by 
the  sight,  or  the  bare  supposition,  of  a  creature  in 
pain,  to  a  degree  which  I  have  never  witnessed  out 
of  womankind.  A  constitutional  acuteness  to  this 
class  of  sufferings  may  in  part  account  for  this.  The 
animal  tribe  in  particular  he  taketh  under  his  especial 
protection.  A  broken-winded  or  spur-galled  horse  is 
sure  to  find  an  advocate  in  him.  An  over-loaded  ass 
is  his  client  for  ever.  He  is  the  apostle  to  the  brute 
kind  —  the  never-failing  friend  of  those  who  have 
none  to  care  for  them.  The  contemplation  of  a 
lobster  boiled,  or  eels  skinned  alive,  will  wring  him 
so,  that  "  all  for  pity  he  could  die."  It  will  take  the 
savour  from  his  palate,  and  the  rest  from  his  pillow, 
for  days  and  nights.  With  the  intense  feeling  of 
Thomas  Clarkson,  he  wanted  only  the  steadiness  of 


MY  RELATIONS.  1 53 

pursuit,  and  unity  of  purpose,  of  that  "true  yoke- 
fellow with  Time,"  to  have  effected  as  much  for  the 
Animaly  as  he  hath  done  for  the  Negro  Creation, 
But  my  uncontrollable  cousin  is  but  imperfectly 
formed  for  purposes  which  demand  co-operation. 
He  cannot  wait.  His  amelioration-plans  must  be 
ripened  in  a  day.  For  this  reason  he  has  cut  but  an 
equivocal  figure  in  benevolent  societies,  and  combina- 
tions for  the  alleviation  of  human  sufferings.  His 
zeal  constantly  makes  him  to  outrun,  and  put  out,  his 
coadjutors.  He  thinks  of  relieving,  —  while  they 
think  of  debating.  He  was  black-balled  out  of  a 
society  for  the  Relief  of**********, 
because  the  fervor  of  his  humanity  toiled  beyond  the 
formal  apprehension,  and  creeping  processes,  of  his 
associates.  I  shall  always  consider  this  distinction  as 
a  patent  of  nobiUty  in  the  Elia  family  ! 

Do  I  mention  these  seeming  inconsistencies  to 
smile  at,  or  upbraid,  my  unique  cousin?  Marry, 
heaven,  and  all  good  manners,  and  the  understanding 
that  should  be  between  kinsfolk,  forbid  !  —  With  all 
the  strangenesses  of  this  strangest  of  the  Elias  —  I 
would  not  have  him  in  one  jot  or  tittle  other  than  he 
is ;  neither  would  I  barter  or  exchange  my  wild  kins- 
man for  the  most  exact,  regular,  and  every-way  con- 
sistent kinsman  breathing. 

In  my  next,  reader,  I  may  perhaps  give  you  some 


154  MY   RELATIONS. 

account  of  my  cousin  Bridget  —  if  you  are  not  already 
surfeited  with  cousins  —  and  take  you  by  the  hand,  if 
you  are  willing  to  go  with  us,  on  an  excursion  which 
we  made  a  summer  or  two  since,  in  search  of  more 
cousins  — 

Through  the  green  plains  of  pleasant  Hertfordshire. 


MACKERY   END, 

IN 

HERTFORDSHIRE. 


BRroGET  EuA  has  been  my  housekeeper  for  many 
a  long  year.  I  have  obligations  to  Bridget,  extending 
beyond  the  period  of  memory.  We  house  together, 
old  bachelor  and  maid,  in  a  sort  of  double  singleness ; 
with  such  tolerable  comfort,  upon  the  whole,  that  I, 
for  one,  find  in  myself  no  sort  of  disposition  to  go  out 
upon  the  mountains,  with  the  rash  king's  offspring,  to 
bewail  my  celibacy.  We  agree  pretty  well  in  our 
tastes  and  habits  —  yet  so,  as  "  with  a  difference." 
We  are  generally  in  harmony,  with  occasional  bicker- 
ings —  as  it  should  be  among  near  relations.  Our 
sympathies  are  rather  understood,  than  expressed ; 
and  once,  upon  my  dissembling  a  tone  in  my  voice 
more  kind  than  ordinary,  my  cousin  burst  into  tears, 
and  complained  that  I  was  altered.  We  are  both 
great  readers  in  different  directions.  While  I  am 
hanging  over  (for  the  thousandth  time)  some  passage 
in  old  Burton,  or  one  of  his  strange  contemporaries, 
she  is  abstracted  in  some  modern  tale,  or  adventure. 


156    MACKERY   END,  IN   HERTFORDSHIRE. 

whereof  our  common  reading- table  is  daily  fed  with 
assiduously  fresh  supplies.  Narrative  teazes  me.  I 
have  little  concern  in  the  progress  of  events.  She 
must  have  a  story  —  well,  ill,  or  indifferently  told  — 
so  there  be  life  stirring  in  it,  and  plenty  of  good  or 
evil  accidents.  The  fluctuations  of  fortune  in  fiction  — 
and  almost  in  real  Hfe  —  have  ceased  to  interest,  or 
operate  but  dully  upon  me.  Out-of-the-way  humours 
and  opinions  —  heads  with  some  diverting  twist  in 
them  —  the  oddities  of  authorship  please  me  most. 
My  cousin  has  a  native  disreHsh  of  any  thing  that 
sounds  odd  or  bizarre.  Nothing  goes  down  with  her, 
that  is  quaint,  irregular,  or  out  of  the  road  of  common 
sympathy.  She  "  holds  Nature  more  clever."  I  can 
pardon  her  blindness  to  the  beautiful  obHquities  of 
the  Religio  Medici ;  but  she  must  apologise  to  me  for 
certain  disrespectful  insinuations,  which  she  has  been 
pleased  to  throw  out  latterly,  touching  the  intellec- 
tuals of  a  dear  favourite  of  mine,  of  the  last  century 
but  one  —  the  thrice  noble,  chaste,  and  virtuous, — 
but  again  somewhat  fantastical,  and  original-brain'd, 
generous  Margaret  Newcastle. 

It  has  been  the  lot  of  my  cousin,  oftener  perhaps 
than  I  could  have  wished,  to  have  had  for  her  asso- 
ciates and  mine,  free-thinkers  —  leaders,  and  disciples, 
of  novel  philosophies  and  systems ;  but  she  neither 
wrangles  with,  nor  accepts,  their  opinions.  That  which 
was  good  and  venerable  to  her,  when  a  child,  retains 


MACKERY   END,   IN    HERTFORDSHIRE.     1 57 

its  authority  over  her  mind  still.  She  never  juggles 
or  plays  tricks  with  her  understanding. 

We  are  both  of  us  inclined  to  be  a  little  too  posi- 
tive ;  and  I  have  observed  the  result  of  our  disputes 
to  be  almost  uniformly  this  —  that  in  matters  of  fact, 
dates,  and  circumstances,  it  turns  out,  that  I  was  in 
the  right,  and  my  cousin  in  the  wrong.  But  where 
we  have  differed  upon  moral  points ;  upon  something 
proper  to  be  done,  or  let  alone ;  whatever  heat  of 
opposition,  or  steadiness  of  conviction,  I  set  out  with, 
I  am  sure  always,  in  the  long  run,  to  be  brought  over 
to  her  way  of  thinking. 

I  must  touch  upon  the  foibles  of  my  kinswoman  with 
a  gentle  hand,  for  Bridget  does  not  like  to  be  told  of 
her  faults.  She  hath  an  awkward  trick  (to  say  no 
worse  of  it)  of  reading  in  company :  at  which  times 
she  will  answer  yes  or  ^o  to  a  question,  without  fully 
understanding  its  purport  —  which  is  provoking,  and 
derogatory  in  the  highest  degree  to  the  dignity  of  the 
putter  of  the  said  question.  Her  presence  of  mind  is 
equal  to  the  most  pressing  trials  of  life,  but  will  some- 
times desert  her  upon  trifling  occasions.  When  the 
purpose  requires  it,  and  is  a  thing  of  moment,  she 
can  speak  to  it  greatly ;  but  in  matters  which  are  not 
stuff  of  the  conscience,  she  hath  been  known  some- 
times to  let  slip  a  word  less  seasonably. 

Her  education  in  youth  was  not  much  attended  to ; 
and  she  happily  missed  all  that  train  of  female  garni- 


158     MACKERY   END,   IN   HERTFORDSHIRE. 

ture,  which  passeth  by  the  name  of  accompHshments. 
She  was  tumbled  early,  by  accident  or  design,  into  a 
spacious  closet  of  good  old  English  reading,  without 
much  selection  or  prohibition,  and  browsed  at  will 
upon  that  fair  and  wholesome  pasturage.  Had  I 
twenty  girls,  they  should  be  brought  up  exactly  in  this 
fashion.  I  know  not  whether  their  chance  in  wedlock 
might  not  be  diminished  by  it ;  but  I  can  answer  for 
it,  that  it  makes  (if  the  worst  come  to  the  worst)  most 
incomparable  old  maids. 

In  a  season  of  distress,  she  is  the  truest  comforter ; 
but  in  the  teazing  accidents,  and  minor  perplexities, 
which  do  not  call  out  the  will  to  meet  them,  she  some- 
times maketh  matters  worse  by  an  excess  of  partici- 
pation. If  she  does  not  always  divide  your  trouble, 
upon  the  pleasanter  occasions  of  life  she  is  sure  always 
to  treble  your  satisfaction.  She  is  excellent  to  be  at 
a  play  with,  or  upon  a  visit ;  but  best,  when  she  goes 
a  journey  with  you. 

We  made  an  excursion  together  a  few  summers 
since,  into  Hertfordshire,  to  beat  up  the  quarters  of 
some  of  our  less-known  relations  in  that  fine  corn 
country. 

The  oldest  thing  I  remember  is  Mackery  End ;  or 
Mackarel  End,  as  it  is  spelt,  perhaps  more  properly, 
in  some  old  maps  of  Hertfordshire ;  a  farm-house,  — 
delightfully  situated  within  a  gentle  walk  from  Wheat- 
hampstead.     I  can  just  remember  having  been  there, 


MACKERY  END,  IN  HERTFORDSHIRE.     1 59 

on  a  visit  to  a  great-aunt,  when  I  was  a  child,  under 
the  care  of  Bridget ;  who,  as  I  have  said,  is  older  than 
myself  by  some  ten  years.  I  wish  that  I  could  throw 
into  a  heap  the  remainder  of  our  joint  existences,  that 
we  might  share  them  in  equal  division.  But  that  is 
impossible.  The  house  was  at  that  time  in  the  occu- 
pation of  a  substantial  yeoman,  who  had  married  my 
grandmother's  sister.  His  name  was  Gladman.  My 
grandmother  was  a  Bruton,  married  to  a  Field.  The 
Gladmans  and  the  Brutons  are  still  flourishing  in  that 
part  of  the  county,  but  the  Fields  are  almost  extinct. 
More  than  forty  years  had  elapsed  since  the  visit  I 
speak  of;  and,  for  the  greater  portion  of  that  period, 
we  had  lost  sight  of  the  other  two  branches  also. 
Who  or  what  sort  of  persons  inherited  Mackery  End  — 
kindred  or  strange  folk  —  we  were  afraid  almost  to 
conjecture,  but  determined  some  day  to  explore. 

By  somewhat  a  circuitous  route,  taking  the  noble 
park  at  Luton  in  our  way  from  Saint  Alban's,  we  ar- 
rived at  the  spot  of  our  anxious  curiosity  about  noon. 
The  sight  of  the  old  farm-house,  though  every  trace 
of  it  was  effaced  from  my  recollection,  affected  me 
with  a  pleasure  which  I  had  not  experienced  for 
many  a  year.  For  though  /  had  forgotten  it,  we 
had  never  forgotten  being  there  together,  and  we 
had  been  talking  about  Mackery  End  all  our  lives, 
till  memory  on  my  part  became  mocked  with  a 
phantom  of  itself,  and  I  thought  I  knew  the  aspect 


l6o    MACKERY   END,   IN    HERTFORDSHIRE. 

of  a  place,   which,  when  present,   O  how  unUke  it 

was  to  that,  which  I  had  conjured  up  so  many  times 

instead  of  it ! 

Still  the  air  breathed  balmily  about  it ;  the  season 

was  in  the  "  heart  of  June,"  and  I  could  say  with 

the  poet, 

But  thou,  that  didst  appear  so  fair 

To  fond  imagination, 
Dost  rival  in  the  light  of  day 

Her  delicate  creation ! 

Bridget's  was  more  a  waking  bliss  than  mine,  for 
she  easily  remembered  her  old  acquaintance  again  — 
some  altered  features,  of  course,  a  little  grudged  at. 
At  first,  indeed,  she  was  ready  to  disbelieve  for  joy ; 
but  the  scene  soon  re-confirmed  itself  in  her  affec- 
tions—  and  she  traversed  every  out-post  of  the  old 
mansion,  to  the  wood-house,  the  orchard,  the  place 
where  the  pigeon-house  had  stood  (house  and  birds 
were  alike  flown)  — with  a  breathless  impatience  of 
recognition,  which  was  more  pardonable  perhaps  than 
decorous  at  the  age  of  fifty  odd.  But  Bridget  in 
some  things  is  behind  her  years. 

The  only  thing  left  was  to  get  into  the  house  — 
and  that  was  a  difficulty  which  to  me  singly  would 
have  been  insurmountable ;  for  I  am  terribly  shy  in 
making  myself  known  to  strangers  and  out-of-date 
kinsfolk.  Love,  stronger  than  scruple,  winged  my 
cousin  in  without  me ;  but  she  soon  returned  with  a 
creature  that   might  have  sat  to  a  sculptor  for  the 


MACKERY   END,   IN   HERTFORDSHIRE.     l6l 

image  of  Welcome.  It  was  the  youngest  of  the 
Gladmans ;  who,  by  marriage  with  a  Bruton,  had  be- 
come mistress  of  the  old  mansion.  A  comely  brood 
are  the  Brutons.  Six  of  them,  females,  were  noted 
as  the  handsomest  young  women  in  the  county. 
But  this  adopted  Bruton,  in  my  mind,  was  better 
than  they  all  —  more  comely.  She  was  born  too 
late  to  have  remembered  me.  She  just  recollected 
in  early  life  to  have  had  her  cousin  Bridget  once 
pointed  out  to  her,  climbing  a  style.  But  the  name 
of  kindred,  and  of  cousinship,  was  enough.  Those 
slender  ties,  that  prove  slight  as  gossamer  in  the 
rending  atmosphere  of  a  metropolis,  bind  faster,  as 
we  found  it,  in  hearty,  homely,  loving  Hertfordshire. 
In  five  minutes  we  were  as  thoroughly  acquainted  as 
if  we  had  been  bom  and  bred  up  together;  were 
familiar,  even  to  the  calling  each  other  by  our  Chris- 
tian names.  So  Christians  should  call  one  another. 
To  have  seen  Bridget,  and  her  —  it  was  like  the 
meeting  of  the  two  scriptural  cousins  !  There  was 
a  grace  and  dignity,  an  amplitude  of  form  and  stat- 
ure, answering  to  her  mind,  in  this  farmer's  wife, 
which  would  have  shined  in  a  palace  —  or  so  we 
thought  it.  We  were  made  welcome  by  husband 
and  wife  equally  —  we,  and  our  friend  that  was  with 
us.  —  I  had  almost  forgotten  him  —  but  B.  F.  will 
not  so  soon  forget  that  meeting,  if  peradventure  he 
shall  read  this  on  the  far  distant  shores  where  the 
II 


1 62    MACKERY  END,   IN   HERTFORDSHIRE. 

Kangaroo  haunts.  The  fatted  calf  was  made  ready, 
or  rather  was  already  so,  as  if  in  anticipation  of  our 
coming;  and,  after  an  appropriate  glass  of  native 
wine,  never  let  me  forget  with  what  honest  pride  this 
hospitable  cousin  made  us  proceed  to  Wheathamp- 
stead,  to  introduce  us  (as  some  new-found  rarity)  to 
her  mother  and  sister  Gladmans,  who  did  indeed 
know  something  more  of  us,  at  a  time  when  she  al- 
most knew  nothing.  —  With  what  corresponding  kind- 
ness we  were  received  by  them  also  —  how  Bridget's 
memory,  exalted  by  the  occasion,  warmed  into  a 
thousand  half-obliterated  recollections  of  things  and 
persons,  to  my  utter  astonishment,  and  her  own  — 
and  to  the  astoundment  of  B.  F.  who  sat  by,  almost 
the  only  thing  that  was  not  a  cousin  there,  —  old 
effaced  images  of  more  than  half- forgotten  names 
and  circumstances  still  crowding  back  upon  her,  as 
words  written  in  lemon  come  out  upon  exposure  to 
a  friendly  warmth,  —  when  I  forget  all  this,  then  may 
my  country  cousins  forget  me ;  and  Bridget  no  more 
remember,  that  in  the  days  of  weakling  infancy  I 
was  her  tender  charge  —  as  I  have  been  her  care 
in  foolish  manhood  since  —  in  those  pretty  pastoral 
walks,  long  ago,  about  Mackery  End,  in  Hertford- 
shire. 


MODERN   GALLANTRY. 


In  comparing  modem  with  ancient  manners,  we  are 
pleased  to  compliment  ourselves  upon  the  point  of 
gallantry;  a  certain  obsequiousness,  or  deferential 
respect,  which  we  are  supposed  to  pay  to  females, 
as  females. 

I  shall  believe  that  this  principle  actuates  our  con- 
duct, when  I  can  forget,  that  in  the  nineteenth  century 
of  the  era  from  which  we  date  our  civility,  we  are  but 
just  beginning  to  leave  off  the  very  frequent  practice 
of  whipping  females  in  public,  in  common  with  the 
coarsest  male  offenders. 

I  shall  believe  it  to  be  influential,  when  I  can  shut 
my  eyes  to  the  fact,  that  in  England  women  are  still 
occasionally  —  hanged. 

I  shall  believe  in  it,  when  actresses  arc  no  longer 
subject  to  be  hissed  off  a  stage  by  gentlemen. 

I  shall  believe  in  it,  when  Dorimant  hands  a  fish- 
wife across  the  kennel ;  or  assists  the  apple-woman 
to  pick  up  her  wandering  fruit,  which  some  unlucky 
dray  has  just  dissipated. 


1 64  MODERN   GALLANTRY. 

I  shall  believe  in  it,  when  the  Dorimants  in  humbler 
life,  who  would  be  thought  in  their  way  notable  adepts 
in  this  refinement,  shall  act  upon  it  in  places  where 
they  are  not  known,  or  think  themselves  not  observed 
—  when  I  shall  see  the  traveller  for  some  rich  trades- 
man part  with  his  admired  box-coat,  to  spread  it  over 
the  defenceless  shoulders  of  the  poor  woman,  who  is 
passing  to  her  parish  on  the  roof  of  the  same  stage- 
coach with  him,  drenched  in  the  rain  —  when  I  shall 
no  longer  see  a  woman  standing  up  in  the  pit  of  a 
London  theatre,  till  she  is  sick  and  faint  with  the 
exertion,  with  men  about  her,  seated  at  their  ease, 
and  jeering  at  her  distress;  till  one,  that  seems  to 
have  more  manners  or  conscience  than  the  rest,  signi- 
ficantly declares  "  she  should  be  welcome  to  his  seat, 
if  she  were  a  little  younger  and  handsomer."  Place 
this  dapper  ware-houseman,  or  that  rider,  in  a  circle 
of  their  own  female  acquaintance,  and  you  shall  con- 
fess you  have  not  seen  a  politer-bred  man  in  Lothbury. 

Lastly,  I  shall  begin  to  believe  that  there  is  some 
such  principle  influencing  our  conduct,  when  more 
than  one-half  of  the  drudgery  and  coarse  servitude  of 
the  world  shall  cease  to  be  performed  by  women. 

Until  that  day  comes,  I  shall  never  beUeve  this 
boasted  point  to  be  any  thing  more  than  a  conven- 
tional fiction ;  a  pageant  got  up  between  the  sexes,  in 
a  certain  rank,  and  at  a  certain  time  of  life,  in  which 
both  find  their  account  equally. 


MODERN   GALLANTRY.  I 65 

I  shall  be  even  disposed  to  rank  it  among  the  salu- 
tary fictions  of  life,  when  in  polite  circles  I  shall  see 
the  same  attentions  paid  to  age  as  to  youth,  to  homely 
features  as  to  handsome,  to  coarse  complexions  as  to 
clear —  to  the  woman,  as  she  is  a  woman,  not  as  she 
is  a  beauty,  a  fortune,  or  a  title. 

I  shall  believe  it  to  be  something  more  than  a  name, 
when  a  well-dressed  gentleman  in  a  well-dressed  com- 
pany can  advert  to  the  topic  oi  female  old  age  without 
exciting,  and  intending  to  excite,  a  sneer :  —  when 
the  phrases  "  antiquated  virginity,"  and  such  a  one 
has  "overstood  her  market,"  pronounced  in  good 
company,  shall  raise  immediate  offence  in  man,  or 
woman,  that  shall  hear  them  spoken. 

Joseph  Paice,  of  Bread-street-hill,  merchant,  and 
one  of  the  Directors  of  the  South-Sea  company  —  the 
same  to  whom  Edwards,  the  Shakspeare  commentator, 
has  addressed  a  fine  sonnet  —  was  the  only  pattern  of 
consistent  gallantry  I  have  met  with.  He  took  me 
under  his  shelter  at  an  early  age,  and  bestowed  some 
pains  upon  me.  I  owe  to  his  precepts  and  example 
whatever  there  is  of  the  man  of  business  (and  that  is 
not  much)  in  my  composition.  It  was  not  his  fault 
that  I  did  not  profit  more.  Though  bred  a  Presby- 
terian, and  brought  up  a  merchant,  he  was  the  finest 
gentleman  of  his  time.  He  had  not  one  system  of 
attention  to  females  in  the  drawing-room,  and  another 
in  the  shop,  or  at  the  stall.     I  do  not  mean  that  he 


I 66  MODERN  GALLANTRY. 

made  no  distinction.  But  he  never  lost  sight  of 
sex,  or  overlooked  it  in  the  casualties  of  a  disad- 
vantageous situation.  I  have  seen  him  stand  bare- 
headed —  smile  if  you  please  —  to  a  poor  servant 
girl,  while  she  has  been  inquiring  of  him  the  way  to 
some  street  —  in  such  a  posture  of  unforced  civility, 
as  neither  to  embarrass  her  in  the  acceptance,  nor 
himself  in  the  offer,  of  it.  He  was  no  dangler,  in  the 
common  acceptation  of  the  word,  after  women :  but 
he  reverenced  and  upheld,  in  every  form  in  which  it 
came  before  him,  womanhood.  I  have  seen  him  — 
nay,  smile  not  —  tenderly  escorting  a  market-woman, 
whom  he  had  encountered  in  a  shower,  exalting  his 
umbrella  over  her  poor  basket  of  fruit,  that  it  might 
receive  no  damage,  with  as  much  carefulness  as  if  she 
had  been  a  Countess.  To  the  reverend  form  of 
Female  Eld  he  would  yield  the  wall  (though  it  were 
to  an  ancient  beggar-woman)  with  more  ceremony 
than  we  can  afford  to  show  our  grandams.  He  was 
the  Preux  Chevalier  of  Age  ;  the  Sir  CaHdore,  or  Sir 
Tristan,  to  those  who  have  no  CaUdores  or  Tristans 
to  defend  them.  The  roses,  that  had  long  faded 
thence,  still  bloomed  for  him  in  those  withered  and 
yellow  cheeks. 

He  was  never  married,  but  in  his  youth  he  paid  his 
addresses  to  the  beautiful  Susan  Winstanley — old 
Winstanley's  daughter  of  Clapton  —  who  dying  in  the 
early  days  of  their  courtship,  confirmed  in  him  the 


MODERN  GALLANTRY.  1 67 

resolution  of  perpetual  bachelorship.     It  was  during 
their  short  courtship,  he  told  me,  that  he  had  been 
one  day  treating  his  mistress  with  a  profusion  of  civil 
speeches  —  the  common  gallantries  —  to  which  kind  of 
thing  she  had  hitherto  manifested  no  repugnance  — but 
in  this  instance  with  no  effect.     He  could  not  obtain 
from  her  a  decent  acknowledgment  in  return.     She 
rather  seemed  to  resent  his  compliments.     He  could 
not  set  it  down  to  caprice,  for  the  lady  had  always 
shown  herself  above  that  littleness.     When  he  ven- 
tured on  the  following  day,  finding  her  a  little  better 
humoured,  to  expostulate  with  her  on  her  coldness  of 
yesterday,  she  confessed,  with   her  usual   frankness, 
that  she  had  no  sort  of  dislike  to  his  attentions ;  that 
she  could  even  endure  some  high-flown  compliments ; 
that  a  young  woman  placed  in  her  situation  had  a 
right  to  expect  all  sort  of  civil  things  said  to  her ;  that 
she  hoped  she  could  digest  a  dose  of  adulation,  short 
of  insincerity,  with  as  little  injury  to  her  humility  as 
most  young  women  :  but  that  —  a  little  before  he  had 
commenced   his   compliments  —  she    had   overheard 
him  by  accident,  in  rather  rough  language,  rating  a 
young  woman,  who  had  not  brought  home  his  cravats 
quite  to  the  appointed  time,  and  she  thought  to  her- 
self, "  As  I  am  Miss  Susan  Winstanley,  and  a  young 
lady  —  a  reputed  beauty,  and  known  to  be  a  fortune, 
—  I  can  have  my  choice  of  the  finest  speeches  from 
the  mouth  of  this  very  fine  gentleman  who  is  courting 


1 68  MODERN   GALLANTRY. 

me  —  but  if  I  had  been  poor  Mary  Such-a-one  {nam- 
ing the  milliner) ,  —  and  had  failed  of  bringing  home 
the  cravats  to  the  appointed  hour  —  though  perhaps 
I  had  sat  up  half  the  night  to  forward  them  —  what 
sort  of  compliments  should  I  have  received  then  ?  — 
And  my  woman's  pride  came  to  my  assistance ;  and  I 
thought,  that  if  it  were  only  to  do  me  honour,  a 
female,  like  myself,  might  have  received  handsomer 
usage  :  and  I  was  determined  not  to  accept  any  fine 
speeches,  to  the  compromise  of  that  sex,  the  belong- 
ing to  which  was  after  all  my  strongest  claim  and  title 
to  them." 

I  think  the  lady  discovered  both  generosity,  and 
a  just  way  of  thinking,  in  this  rebuke  which  she  gave 
her  lover ;  and  I  have  sometimes  imagined,  that  the 
uncommon  strain  of  courtesy,  which  through  life  regu- 
lated the  actions  and  behaviour  of  my  friend  towards 
all  of  womankind  indiscriminately,  owed  its  happy 
origin  to  this  seasonable  lesson  from  the  lips  of  his 
lamented  mistress. 

I  wish  the  whole  female  world  would  entertain  the 
same  notion  of  these  things  that  Miss  Winstanley 
showed.  Then  we  should  see  something  of  the  spirit 
of  consistent  gallantry;  and  no  longer  witness  the 
anomaly  of  the  same  man  —  a  pattern  of  true  polite- 
ness to  a  wife  —  of  cold  contempt,  or  rudeness,  to  a 
sister  —  the  idolater  of  his  female  mistress  —  the  dis- 
parager and  despiser  of  his  no  less  female  aunt,  or 


MODERN    GALLANTRY.  1 69 

unfortunate  —  still  female  —  maiden  cousin.  Just  so 
much  respect  as  a  woman  derogates  from  her  own  sex, 
in  whatever  condition  placed  —  her  handmaid,  or  de- 
pendent—  she  deserves  to  have  diminished  from 
herself  on  that  score ;  and  probably  will  feel  the  dimi- 
nution, when  youth,  and  beauty,  and  advantages,  not 
inseparable  from  sex,  shall  lose  of  their  attraction. 
What  a  woman  should  demand  of  a  man  in  courtship, 
or  after  it,  is  first  —  respect  for  her  as  she  is  a  woman ; 
—  and  next  to  that  —  to  be  respected  by  him  above 
all  other  women.  But  let  her  stand  upon  her  female 
character  as  upon  a  foundation ;  and  let  the  attentions, 
incident  to  individual  preference,  be  so  many  pretty 
additaments  and  ornaments  —  as  many,  and  as  fanci- 
ful, as  you  please  —  to  that  main  structure.  Let  her 
first  lesson  be  —  with  sweet  Susan  Winstanley  —  to 
reverence  her  sex. 


THE    OLD    BENCHERS    OF    THE 
INNER   TEMPLE. 


I  WAS  born,  and  passed  the  first  seven  years  of  my  life, 
in  the  Temple.  Its  church,  its  halls,  its  gardens,  its 
fountain,  its  river,  I  had  almost  said  —  for  in  those 
young  years,  what  was  this  king  of  rivers  to  me  but  a 
stream  that  watered  our  pleasant  places  ?  —  these  are 
of  my  oldest  recollections.  I  repeat,  to  this  day,  no 
verses  to  myself  more  frequently,  or  with  kindlier 
emotion,  than  those  of  Spenser,  where  he  speaks  of 
this  spot. 

There  when  they  came,  whereas  those  bricky  towers, 
The  which  on  Themmes  brode  aged  back  doth  ride, 
Where  now  the  studious  lawyers  have  their  bowers. 
There  whylome  wont  the  Templer  knights  to  bide, 
Till  they  decayd  through  pride. 

Indeed,  it  is  the  most  elegant  spot  in  the  metropolis. 
What  a  transition  for  a  countryman  visiting  London 
for  the  first  time  —  the  passing  from  the  crowded 
Strand  or  Fleet- street,  by  unexpected  avenues,  into 
its  magnificent  ample  squares,  its  classic  green  re- 
cesses !     What  a  cheerful,  liberal  look  hath  that  por- 


OLD  BENCHERS  OF  THE  INNER  TEMPLE.     1 71 

tion  of  it,    which,  from    three  sides,  overlooks   the 
greater  garden :  that  goodly  pile 

Of  building  strong,  albeit  of  Paper  hight, 
confronting,  with  massy  contrast,  the  lighter,  older, 
more  fantastically  shrouded  one,  named  of  Harcourt, 
with  the  cheerful  Crown- office  Row  (place  of  my 
kindly  engendure),  right  opposite  the  stately  stream, 
which  washes  the  garden-foot  with  her  yet  scarcely 
trade-polluted  waters,  and  seems  but  just  weaned  from 
her  Twickenham  Naiades !  a  man  would  give  some- 
thing to  have  been  born  in  such  places.  What  a  col- 
legiate aspect  has  that  fine  Elizabethan  hall,  where 
the  fountain  plays,  which  I  have  made  to  rise  and  fall, 
how  many  times !  to  the  astoundment  of  the  young 
urchins,  my  contemporaries,  who,  not  being  able  to 
guess  at  its  recondite  machinery,  were  almost  tempted 
to  hail  the  wondrous  work  as  magic  !  What  an  an- 
tique air  had  the  now  almost  effaced  sun-dials,  with 
their  moral  inscriptions,  seeming  coevals  with  that 
Time  which  they  measured,  and  to  take  their  revela- 
tions of  its  flight  immediately  from  heaven,  holding 
correspondence  with  the  fountain  of  light !  How 
would  the  dark  line  steal  imperceptibly  on,  watched 
by  the  eye  of  childhood,  eager  to  detect  its  movement, 
never  catched,  nice  as  an  evanescent  cloud,  or  the 
first  arrests  of  sleep  ! 

Ah  !  yet  doth  beauty  like  a  dial-hand 

Steal  from  his  figure,  and  no  pace  perceived  I 


1/2  THE  OLD   BENCHERS 

What  a  dead  thing  is  a  clock,  with  its  ponderous 
embowelments  of  lead  and  brass,  its  pert  or  solemn 
dulness  of  communication,  compared  with  the  simple 
altar-like  structure,  and  silent  heart-language  of  the 
old  dial !  It  stood  as  the  garden  god  of  Christian 
gardens.  Why  is  it  almost  every  where  vanished  ?  If 
its  business-use  be  superseded  by  more  elaborate  in- 
ventions, its  moral  uses,  its  beauty,  might  have  pleaded 
for  its  continuance.  It  spoke  of  moderate  labours, 
of  pleasures  not  protracted  after  sun-set,  of  temper- 
ance, and  good-hours.  It  was  the  primitive  clock, 
the  horologe  of  the  first  world.  Adam  could  scarce 
have  missed  it  in  Paradise.  It  was  the  measure  ap- 
propriate for  sweet  plants  and  flowers  to  spring  by, 
for  the  birds  to  apportion  their  silver  warblings  by, 
for  flocks  to  pasture  and  be  led  to  fold  by.  The 
shepherd  "  carved  it  out  quaintly  in  the  sun;  "  and, 
turning  philosopher  by  the  very  occupation,  provided 
it  with  mottos  more  touching  than  tombstones.  It 
was  a  pretty  device  of  the  gardener,  recorded  by  Mar- 
veil,  who,  in  the  days  of  artificial  gardening,  made  a 
dial  out  of  herbs  and  flowers.  I  must  quote  his 
verses  a  little  higher  up,  for  they  are  full,  as  all  his 
serious  poetry  was,  of  a  witty  delicacy.  They  will  not 
come  in  awkwardly,  I  hope,  in  a  talk  of  fountains  and 
suji-dials.     He  is  speaking  of  sweet  garden  scenes  : 

What  wondrous  life  in  this  I  lead  I 
Ripe  apples  drop  about  my  head. 


OF  THE   INNER  TEMPLE.  1 73 

The  luscious  clusters  of  the  vine 
Upon  my  mouth  do  crush  their  wine. 
The  nectarine,  and  curious  peach, 
Into  my  hands  themselves  do  reach. 
Stumbling  on  melons,  as  I  pass, 
Insnared  with  flowers,  I  fall  on  grass. 
Meanwhile  the  mind  from  pleasure  less 
Withdraws  into  its  happiness. 
The  mind,  that  ocean,  where  each  kind 
Does  straight  its  own  resemblance  find; 
Yet  it  creates,  transcending  these. 
Far  other  worlds,  and  other  seas ; 
Annihilating  all  that 's  made 
To  a  green  thought  in  a  green  shade. 
Here  at  the  fountain's  sliding  foot, 
Or  at  some  fruit-tree's  mossy  root, 
Casting  the  body's  vest  aside, 
My  soul  into  the  boughs  does  glide : 
There,  like  a  bird,  it  sits  and  sings. 
Then  whets  and  claps  its  silver  wings ; 
And,  till  prepared  for  longer  flight. 
Waves  in  its  plumes  the  various  light. 
How  well  the  skilful  gardener  drew. 
Of  flowers  and  herbs,  this  dial  new  I 
Where,  from  above,  the  milder  sun 
Does  through  a  fragrant  zodiac  run : 
And,  as  it  works,  the  industrious  bee 
Computes  its  time  as  well  as  we. 
How  could  such  sweet  and  wholesome  hours 
Be  reckon'd,  but  with  herbs  and  flowers }  * 

The  artificial  fountains  of  the  metropoHs  are,  in 
like  manner,  fast  vanishing.  Most  of  them  are  dried 
up,  or  bricked  over.     Yet,  where  one  is  left,  as  in 

*  From  a  copy  of  verses  entitled  The  Garden. 


1/4  '^'^E   OLD   BENCHERS 

that  little  green  nook  behind  the  South  Sea  House, 
what  a  freshness  it  gives  to  the  dreary  pile  !  Four 
little  winged  marble  boys  used  to  play  their  virgin 
fancies,  spouting  out  ever  fresh  streams  from  their 
innocent-wanton  lips,  in  the  square  of  Lincoln's-inn, 
when  I  was  no  bigger  than  they  were  figured.  They 
are  gone,  and  the  spring  choked  up.  The  fashion, 
they  tell  me,  is  gone  by,  and  these  things  are  es- 
teemed childish.  Why  not  then  gratify  children,  by 
letting  them  stand?  Lawyers,  I  suppose,  were  chil- 
dren once.  They  are  awakening  images  to  them  at 
least.  Why  must  every  thing  smack  of  man,  and 
mannish  ?  Is  the  world  all  grown  up  ?  Is  childhood 
dead?  Or  is  there  not  in  the  bosoms  of  the  wisest 
and  the  best  some  of  the  child's  heart  left,  to  respond 
to  its  earhest  enchantments?  The  figures  were  gro- 
tesque. Are  the  stiff-wigged  living  figures,  that  still 
flitter  and  chatter  about  that  area,  less  gothic  in  ap- 
pearance ?  or  is  the  splutter  of  their  hot  rhetoric  one 
half  so  refreshing  and  innocent  as  the  little  cool  play- 
ful streams  those  exploded  cherubs  uttered? 

They  have  lately  gothicised  the  entrance  to  the 
Inner  Temple-hall,  and  the  library  front,  to  assimi- 
late them,  I  suppose,  to  the  body  of  the  hall,  which 
they  do  not  at  all  resemble.  What  is  become  of  the 
winged  horse  that  stood  over  the  former?  a  stately 
arms  !  and  who  has  removed  those  frescoes  of  the 
Virtues,   which   Italianized    the   end   of  the   Paper- 


OF  THE  INNER  TEMPLE.  1 75 

buildings  ?  —  my  first  hint  of  allegory  !  They  must 
account  to  me  for  these  things,  which  I  miss  so 
greatly. 

The  terrace  is,  indeed,  left,  which  we  used  to  call 
the  parade ;  but  the  traces  are  passed  away  of  the 
footsteps  which  made  its  pavement  awful !  It  is 
become  common  and  profane.  The  old  benchers 
had  it  almost  sacred  to  themselves,  in  the  forepart 
of  the  day  at  least.  They  might  not  be  sided  or 
jostled.  Their  air  and  dress  asserted  the  parade. 
You  left  wide  spaces  betwixt  you,  when  you  passed 
them.  We  walk  on  even  terms  with  their  successors. 
The  roguish  eye  of  J 11,  ever  ready  to  be  deliv- 
ered of  a  jest,  almost  invites  a  stranger  to  vie  a  re- 
partee with  it.  But  what  insolent  familiar  durst  have 
mated  Thomas  Coventry  ?  —  whose  person  was  a 
quadrate,  his  step  massy  and  elephantine,  his  face 
square  as  the  lion's,  his  gait  peremptory  and  path- 
keeping,  indivertible  from  his  way  as  a  moving  col- 
umn, the  scarecrow  of  his  inferiors,  the  brow-beater 
of  equals  and  superiors,  who  made  a  solitude  of 
children  wherever  he  came,  for  they  fled  his  insuffer- 
able presence,  as  they  would  have  shunned  an  Elisha 
bear.  His  growl  was  as  thunder  in  their  ears, 
whether  he  spake  to  them  in  mirth  or  in  rebuke,  his 
invitatory  notes  being,  indeed,  of  all,  the  most  re- 
pulsive and  horrid.  Clouds  of  snuff,  aggravating  the 
natural  terrors  of  his  speech,  broke  from  each  ma- 


176  THE  OLD  BENCHERS 

jestic  nostril,  darkening  the  air.  He  took  it,  not  by 
pinches,  but  a  palmful  at  once,  diving  for  it  under 
the  mighty  flaps  of  his  old-fashioned  waistcoat 
pocket ;  his  waistcoat  red  and  angry,  his  coat  dark 
rappee,  tinctured  by  dye  original,  and  by  adjuncts, 
with  buttons  of  obsolete  gold.  And  so  he  paced 
the  terrace. 

By  his  side  a  milder  form  was  sometimes  to  be 
seen;  the  pensive  gentility  of  Samuel  Salt.  They 
were  coevals,  and  had  nothing  but  that  and  their 
benchership  in  common.  In  politics  Salt  was  a 
whig,  and  Coventry  a  staunch  tory.  Many  a  sar- 
castic growl  did  the  latter  cast  out  —  for  Coventry 
had  a  rough  spinous  humour  —  at  the  political  con- 
federates of  his  associate,  which  rebounded  from 
the  gentle  bosom  of  the  latter  like  cannon-balls  from 
wool.     You  could  not  ruffle  Samuel  Salt. 

S.  had  the  reputation  of  being  a  very  clever  man, 
and  of  excellent  discernment  in  the  chamber  practice 
of  the  law.  I  suspect  his  knowledge  did  not  amount 
to  much.  When  a  case  of  difficult  disposition  of 
money,  testamentary  or  otherwise,  came  before  him, 
he  ordinarily  handed  it  over  with  a  few  instructions 
to  his  man  Lovel,  who  was  a  quick  little  fellow,  and 
would  despatch  it  out  of  hand  by  the  light  of  natural 
understanding,  of  which  he  had  an  uncommon  share. 
It  was  incredible  what  repute  for  talents  S.  enjoyed 
by  the  mere  trick  of  gravity.     He  was  a  shy  man; 


OF  THE  INNER  TEMPLE.  177 

a  child  might  pose  him  in  a  minute  —  indolent  and 
procrastinating  to  the  last  degree.  Yet  men  would 
give  him  credit  for  vast  application  in  spite  of  him- 
self. He  was  not  to  be  trusted  with  himself  with 
impunity.  He  never  dressed  for  a  dinner-party  but 
he  forgot  his  sword  —  they  wore  swords  then  —  or 
some  other  necessary  part  of  his  equipage.  Lovel 
had  his  eye  upon  him  on  all  these  occasions,  and 
ordinarily  gave  him  his  cue.  If  there  was  any  thing 
which  he  could  speak  unseasonably,  he  was  sure  to 
do  it.  —  He  was  to  dine  at  a  relative's  of  the  unfor- 
tunate Miss  Blandy  on  the  day  of  her  execution ;  — 
and  L.  who  had  a  wary  foresight  of  his  probable  hal- 
lucinations, before  he  set  out,  schooled  him  with 
great  anxiety  not  in  any  possible  manner  to  allude  to 
her  story  that  day.  S.  promised  faithfully  to  observe 
the  injunction.  He  had  not  been  seated  in  the  par- 
lour, where  the  company  was  expecting  the  dinner 
summons,  four  minutes,  when,  a  pause  in  the  conver- 
sation ensuing,  he  got  up,  looked  out  of  window,  and 
pulling  down  his  ruffles  —  an  ordinary  motion  with 
him  —  observed,  "it  was  a  gloomy  day,"  and  added, 
"  Miss  Blandy  must  be  hanged  by  this  time,  I  suppose." 
Instances  of  this  sort  were  perpetual.  Yet  S.  was 
thought  by  some  of  the  greatest  men  of  his  time  a  fit 
person  to  be  consulted,  not  alone  in  matters  pertain- 
ing to  the  law,  but  in  the  ordinary  niceties  and  em- 
barrassments   of   conduct  —  from    force   of   manner 


178  THE   OLD   BENCHERS 

entirely.  He  never  laughed.  He  had  the  same  good 
fortune  among  the  female  world,  —  was  a  known  toast 
with  the  ladies,  and  one  or  two  are  said  to  have  died 
for  love  of  him  —  I  suppose,  because  he  never  trifled 
or  talked  gallantry  with  them,  or  paid  them,  indeed, 
hardly  common  attentions.  He  had  a  fine  face  and 
person,  but  wanted,  methought,  the  spirit  that  should 
have  shown  them  off  with  advantage  to  the  women. 

His  eye  lacked  lustre.  —  Not  so,  thought  Susan  P ; 

who,  at  the  advanced  age  of  sixty,  was  seen,  in  the 
cold  evening  time,  unaccompanied,  wetting  the  pave- 
ment of  B d  Row,  with  tears  that  fell  in  drops 

which  might  be  heard,  because  her  friend  had  died  that 
day  —  he,  whom  she  had  pursued  with  a  hopeless  pas- 
sion for  the  last  forty  years  —  a  passion,  which  years 
could  not  extinguish  or  abate  ;  nor  the  long  resolved,  yet 
gently  enforced,  puttings  off  of  unrelenting  bachelor- 
hood  dissuade    from    its   cherished   purpose.      Mild 

Susan  P ,  thou  hast  now  thy  friend  in  heaven  ! 

Thomas  Coventry  was  a  cadet  of  the  noble  family 
of  that  name.  He  passed  his  youth  in  contracted 
circumstances,  which  gave  him  early  those  parsimo- 
nious habits  which  in  after  life  never  forsook  him ;  so 
that,  with  one  windfall  or  another,  about  the  time 
I  knew  him  he  was  master  of  four  or  five  hundred 
thousand  pounds ;  nor  did  he  look,  or  walk,  worth  a 
moidore  less.  He  lived  in  a  gloomy  house  opposite 
the   pump   in    Seijeant's-inn,   Fleet-street.      J.,   the 


OF  THE   INNER  TEMPLE.  1 79 

counsel,  is  doing  self-imposed  penance  in  it,  for  what 
reason  I  divine  not,  at  this  day.  C.  had  an  agreeable 
seat  at  North  Cray,  where  he  seldom  spent  above  a 
day  or  two  at  a  time  in  the  summer ;  but  preferred, 
during  the  hot  months,  standing  at  his  window  in  this 
damp,  close,  well-Hke  mansion,  to  watch,  as  he  said, 
"  the  maids  drawing  water  all  day  long."  I  suspect 
he  had  his  within-door  reasons  for  the  preference. 
Hie  currus  et  arinafuere.  He  might  think  his  trea- 
sures more  safe.  His  house  had  the  aspect  of  a  strong 
box.  C.  was  a  close  hunks  —  a  hoarder  rather  than 
a  miser  —  pj,  if  a  miser,  none  of  the  mad  Elwes  breed, 
who  have  brought  discredit  upon  a  character,  which 
cannot  exist  without  certain  admirable  points  of  stead- 
iness and  unity  of  purpose.  One  may  hate  a  true 
miser,  but  cannot,  I  suspect,  so  easily  despise  him. 
By  taking  care  of  the  pence,  he  is  often  enabled  to 
part  with  the  pounds,  upon  a  scale  that  leaves  us  care- 
less generous  fellows  halting  at  an  immeasurable  dis- 
tance behind.  C.  gave  away  30,000/.  at  once  in  his 
life-time  to  a  blind  charity.  His  housekeeping  was 
severely  looked  after,  but  he  kept  the  table  of  a  gen- 
tleman. He  would  know  who  came  in  and  who  went 
out  of  his  house,  but  his  kitchen  chimney  was  never 
suffered  to  freeze. 

Salt  was  his  opposite  in  this,  as  in  all  —  never  knew 
what  he  was  worth  in  the  world ;  and  having  but  a 
competency  for  his  rank,  which  his  indolent  habits 


l80  THE   OLD   BENCHERS 

were  little  calculated  to  improve,  might  have  suffered 
severely  if  he  had  not  had  honest  people  about  him. 
Level  took  care  of  every  thing.  He  was  at  once  his 
clerk,  his  good  servant,  his  dresser,  his  friend,  his 
"flapper,"  his  guide,  stop-watch,  auditor,  treasurer. 
He  did  nothing  without  consulting  Lovel,  or  failed 
in  any  thing  without  expecting  and  fearing  his  admon- 
ishing. He  put  himself  almost  too  much  in  his  hands, 
had  they  not  been  the  purest  in  the  world.  He  re- 
signed his  title  almost  to  respect  as  a  master,  if  L. 
could  ever  have  forgotten  for  a  moment  that  he  was  a 
servant. 

I  knew  this  Lovel.  He  was  a  man  of  an  incorri- 
gible and  losing  honesty.  A  good  fellow  withal,  and 
"would  strike."  In  the  cause  of  the  oppressed  he 
never  considered  inequalities,  or  calculated  the  num- 
ber of  his  opponents.  He  once  wrested  a  sword 
out  of  the  hand  of  a  man  of  quality  that  had  drawn 
upon  him  ;  and  pommelled  him  severely  with  the  hilt 
of  it.  The  swordsman  had  offered  insult  to  a  female 
—  an  occasion  upon  which  no  odds  against  him  could 
have  prevented  the  interference  of  Lovel.  He  would 
stand  next  day  bare-headed  to  the  same  person, 
modestly  to  excuse  his  interference  —  for  L.  never 
forgot  rank,  where  something  better  was  not  concerned. 
L.  was  the  liveliest  little  fellow  breathing,  had  a  face 
as  gay  as  Garrick's,  whom  he  was  said  greatly  to  re- 
semble (I  have  a  portrait  of  him  which  confirms  it), 


OF  THE   INNER  TEMPLE.  l8l 

possessed  a  fine  turn  for  humorous  poetry  —  next  to 
Swift  and  Prior  —  moulded  heads  in  clay  or  plaster  of 
Paris  to  admiration,  by  the  dint  of  natural  genius 
merely;  turned  cribbage  boards,  and  such  small 
cabinet  toys,  to  perfection ;  took  a  hand  at  quadrille 
or  bowls  with  equal  facility ;  made  punch  better  than 
any  man  of  his  degree  in  England ;  had  the  merriest 
quips  and  conceits,  and  was  altogether  as  brimful  of 
rogueries  and  inventions  as  you  could  desire.  He 
was  a  brother  of  the  angle,  moreover,  and  just  such  a 
free,  hearty,  honest  companion  as  Mr.  Isaac  Walton 
would  have  chosen  to  go  a  fishing  with.  I  saw  him  in 
his  old  age  and  the  decay  of  his  faculties,  palsy- smitten, 
in  the  last  sad  stage  of  human  weakness  —  "a  remnant 
most  forlorn  of  what  he  was,"  —  yet  even  then  his 
eye  would  light  up  upon  the  mention  of  his  favourite 
Garrick.  He  was  greatest,  he  would  say,  in  Bayes  — 
"  was  upon  the  stage  nearly  throughout  the  whole  per- 
formance, and  as  busy  as  a  bee."  At  intervals,  too, 
he  would  speak  of  his  former  life,  and  how  he  came 
up  a  little  boy  from  Lincoln  to  go  to  service,  and  how 
his  mother  cried  at  parting  with  him,  and  how  he  re- 
turned, after  some  few  years'  absence,  in  his  smart 
new  livery  to  see  her,  and  she  blessed  herself  at  the 
change,  and  could  hardly  be  brought  to  believe  that  it 
was  "  her  own  bairn."  And  then,  the  excitement  sub- 
siding, he  would  weep,  till  I  have  wished  that  sad 
second-childhood  might  have  a  mother  still  to  lay  its 


1 82  THE   OLD   BENCHERS 

head  upon  her  lap.  But  the  common  mother  of  us 
all  in  no  long  time  after  received  him  gently  into  hers. 
With  Coventry,  and  with  Salt,  in  their  walks  upon 
the  terrace,  most  commonly  Peter  Pierson  would  join, 
to  make  up  a  third.  They  did  not  walk  linked  arm  in 
arm  in  those  days  —  "as  now  our  stout  triumvirs 
sweep  the  streets,"  —  but  generally  with  both  hands 
folded  behind  them  for  state,  or  with  one  at  least 
behind,  the  other  carrying  a  cane.  P.  was  a  benevo- 
lent, but  not  a  prepossessing  man.  He  had  that  in 
his  face  which  you  could  not  term  unhappiness;  it 
rather  implied  an  incapacity  of  being  happy.  His 
cheeks  were  colourless,  even  to  whiteness.  His  look 
was  uninviting,  resembling  (but  without  his  sourness) 
that  of  our  great  philanthropist.  I  know  that  he  did 
good  acts,  but  I  could  never  make  out  what  he  was. 
Contemporary  with  these,  but  subordinate,  was  Daines 
Barrington  —  another  oddity  —  he  walked  burly  and 
square  —  in  imitation,  I  think,  of  Coventry  —  howbeit 
he  attained  not  to  the  dignity  of  his  prototype.  Never- 
theless, he  did  pretty  well,  upon  the  strength  of  being 
a  tolerable  antiquarian,  and  having  a  brother  a  bishop. 
When  the  account  of  his  year's  treasure rship  came  to 
be  audited,  the  following  singular  charge  was  unani- 
mously disallowed  by  the  bench :  "  Item,  disbursed 
Mr.  Allen,  the  gardener,  twenty  shillings,  for  stuif  to 
poison  the  sparrows,  by  my  orders."  Next  to  him 
was  old  Barton  —  a  jolly  negation,  who  took  upon  him 


OF  THE  INNER  TEMPLE.  1 83 

the  ordering  of  the  bills  of  fare  for  the  parliament 
chamber,  where  the  benchers  dine  —  answering  to  the 
combination  rooms  at  college  —  much  to  the  ease- 
ment of  his  less  epicurean  brethren.  I  know  nothing 
more  of  him.  —  Then  Read,  and  Twopenny  —  Read, 
good-humoured  and  personable — Twopenny,  good- 
humoured,  but  thin,  and  felicitous  in  jests  upon  his 
own  figure.  If  T.  was  thin,  Wharry  was  attenuated 
and  fleeting.  Many  must  remember  him  (for  he  was 
rather  of  later  date)  and  his  singular  gait,  which  was 
performed  by  three  steps  and  a  jump  regularly  suc- 
ceeding. The  steps  were  little  efforts,  like  that  of  a 
child  beginning  to  walk;  the  jump  comparatively 
vigorous,  as  a  foot  to  an  inch.  Where  he  learned  this 
figure,  or  what  occasioned  it,  I  could  never  discover. 
It  was  neither  graceful  in  itself,  nor  seemed  to  answer 
the  purpose  any  better  than  common  walking.  The 
extreme  tenuity  of  his  frame,  I  suspect,  set  him  upon 
it.  It  was  a  trial  of  poising.  Twopenny  would  often 
rally  him  upon  his  leanness,  and  hail  him  as  Brother 
Lusty ;  but  W.  had  no  relish  of  a  joke.  His  features 
were  spiteful.  I  have  heard  that  he  would  pinch  his 
cat's  ears  extremely,  when  any  thing  had  offended 
him.  Jackson  —  the  omniscient  Jackson  he  was  called 
—  was  of  this  period.  He  had  the  reputation  of  pos- 
sessing more  multifarious  knowledge  than  any  man 
of  his  time.  He  was  the  Friar  Bacon  of  the  less  lit- 
erate portion  of  the  Temple.     I  remember  a  pleasant 


l84  THE  OLD   BENCHERS 

passage,  of  the  cook  applying  to  him,  with  much 
formality  of  apology,  for  instructions  how  to  write 
down  edge  bone  of  beef  in  his  bill  of  commons.  He 
was  supposed  to  know,  if  any  man  in  the  world  did. 
He  decided  the  orthography  to  be  —  as  I  have  given 
it  —  fortifying  his  authority  with  such  anatomical 
reasons  as  dismissed  the  manciple  (for  the  time) 
learned  and  happy.  Some  do  spell  it  yet  perversely, 
aitch  bone,  from  a  fanciful  resemblance  between  its 
shape,  and  that  of  the  aspirate  so  denominated.  I 
had  almost  forgotten  Mingay  with  the  iron  hand  —  but 
he  was  somewhat  later.  He  had  lost  his  right  hand 
by  some  accident,  and  supplied  it  with  a  grappling 
hook,  which  he  wielded  with  a  tolerable  adroitness. 
I  detected  the  substitute,  before  I  was  old  enough  to 
reason  whether  it  were  artificial  or  not.  I  remember 
the  astonishment  it  raised  in  me.  He  was  a  blus- 
tering, loud-talking  person;  and  I  reconciled  the 
phenomenon  to  my  ideas  as  an  emblem  of  power  — 
somewhat  like  the  horns  in  the  forehead  of  Michael 
Angelo's  Moses.  Baron  Maseres,  who  walks  (or  did 
till  very  lately)  in  the  costume  of  the  reign  of  George 
the  Second,  closes  my  imperfect  recollections  of  the 
old  benchers  of  the  Inner  Temple. 

Fantastic  forms,  whither  are  ye  fled?  Or,  if  the 
like  of  you  exist,  why  exist  they  no  more  for  me  ?  Ye 
inexplicable,  half-understood  appearances,  why  comes 
in  reason  to  tear  away  the  preternatural  mist,  bright 


OF   THE   INNER  TEMPLE.  1 85 

or  gloomy,  that  enshrouded  you?  Why  make  ye  so 
sorry  a  figure  in  my  relation,  who  made  up  to  me  — 
to  my  childish  eyes  —  the  mythology  of  the  Temple  ? 
In  those  days  I  saw  Gods,  as  "  old  men  covered  with 
a  mantle,"  walking  upon  the  earth.  Let  the  dreams 
of  classic  idolatry  perish,  —  extinct  be  the  fairies  and 
fairy  trumpery  of  legendary  fabling,  —  in  the  heart  of 
childhood,  there  will,  for  ever,  spring  up  a  well  of  in- 
nocent or  wholesome  superstition  —  the  seeds  of  ex- 
aggeration will  be  busy  there,  and  vital  —  from  every- 
day forms  educing  the  unknown  and  the  uncommon. 
In  that  little  Goshen  there  will  be  light,  when  the 
grown  world  flounders  about  in  the  darkness  of  sense 
and  materiality.  While  childhood,  and  while  dreams, 
reducing  childhood,  shall  be  left,  imagination  shall  not 
have  spread  her  holy  wings  totally  to  fly  the  earth. 


P.  S.  I  have  done  injustice  to  the  soft  shade  of 
Samuel  Salt.  See  what  it  is  to  trust  to  imperfect 
memory,  and  the  erring  notices  of  childhood  !  Yet  I 
protest  I  always  thought  that  he  had  been  a  bachelor  ! 
This  gentleman,  R.  N.  informs  me,  married  young, 
and  losing  his  lady  in  child-bed,  within  the  first  year 
of  their  union,  fell  into  a  deep  melancholy,  from  the 
effects  of  which,  probably,  he  never  thoroughly  re- 
covered. In  what  a  new  light  does  this  place  his 
rejection  (O  call  it  by  a  gentler  name  !)  of  mild 
Susan  P ,  unravelling  into  beauty  certain  peculiar- 


1 86  THE   OLD   BENCHERS 

ities  of  this  very  shy  and  retiring  character  !  —  Hence- 
forth let  no  one  receive  the  narratives  of  EHa  for  true 
records  !  They  are,  in  truth,  but  shadows  of  fact  — 
verisimilitudes,  not  verities  —  or  sitting  but  upon  the 
remote  edges  and  outskirts  of  history.  He  is  no  such 
honest  chronicler  as  R.  N.,  and  would  have  done 
better  perhaps  to  have  consulted  that  gentleman, 
before  he  sent  these  incondite  reminiscences  to  press. 
But  the  worthy  sub-treasurer  —  who  respects  his  old 
and  his  new  masters  —  would  but  have  been  puzzled 
at  the  indecorous  liberties  of  Elia.  The  good  man 
wots  not,  peradventure,  of  the  license  which  Maga- 
zines have  arrived  at  in  this  plain-speaking  age,  or 
hardly  dreams  of  their  existence  beyond  the  Gentle- 
man^s  —  his  furthest  monthly  excursions  in  this  nature 
having  been  long  confined  to  the  holy  ground  of 
honest  Urban's  obituary.  May  it  be  long  before  his 
own  name  shall  help  to  swell  those  columns  of  unen- 
vied  flattery  !  —  Meantime,  O  ye  New  Benchers  of  the 
Inner  Temple,  cherish  him  kindly,  for  he  is  himself 
the  kindliest  of  human  creatures.  Should  infirmities 
over-take  him —  he  is  yet  in  green  and  vigorous  senility 
—  make  allowances  for  them,  remembering  that  "  ye 
yourselves  are  old."  So  may  the  Winged  Horse,  your 
ancient  badge  and  cognisance,  still  flourish  !  so  may 
future  Hookers  and  Seldens  illustrate  your  church  and 
chambers  !  so  may  the  sparrows,  in  default  of  more 
melodious  quiristers,  unpoisoned  hop  about  your  walks  ! 


OF  THE   INNER   TEMPLE.  1 87 

SO  may  the  fresh-coloured  and  cleanly  nursery  maid, 
who,  by  leave,  airs  her  playful  charge  in  your  stately 
gardens,  drop  her  prettiest  blushing  curtsy  as  ye  pass, 
reductive  of  juvenescent  emotion  !  so  may  the  youn- 
kers  of  this  generation  eye  you,  pacing  your  stately 
terrace,  with  the  same  superstitious  veneration,  with 
which  the  child  Elia  gazed  on  the  Old  Worthies  that 
solemnized  the  parade  before  ye  I 


GRACE  BEFORE   MEAT. 


The  custom  of  saying  grace  at  meals  had,  probably, 
its  origin  in  the  early  times  of  the  world,  and  the 
hunter-state  of  man,  when  dinners  were  precarious 
things,  and  a  full  meal  was  something  more  than  a 
common  blessing;  when  a  belly-full  was  a  windfall, 
and  looked  like  a  special  providence.  In  the  shouts 
and  triumphal  songs,  with  which,  after  a  season  of 
sharp  abstinence,  a  lucky  booty  of  deer's  or  goat's 
flesh  would  naturally  be  ushered  home,  existed,  per- 
haps, the  germ  of  the  modern  grace.  It  is  not 
otherwise  easy  to  be  understood,  why  the  blessing 
of  food  —  the  act  of  eating  —  should  have  had  a  par- 
ticular expression  of  thanksgiving  annexed  to  it,  dis- 
tinct from  that  implied  and  silent  gratitude  which 
we  are  expected  to  enter  upon  the  enjoyment  of 
the  many  other  various  gifts  and  good  things  of 
existence. 

I  own  that  I  am  disposed  to  say  grace  upon  twenty 
other  occasions  in  the  course  of  the  day  besides  my 
dinner.  I  want  a  form  for  setting  out  upon  a  pleas- 
ant  walk,    for    a    moonlight    ramble,    for   a   friendly 


GRACE  BEFORE  MEAT.  1 89 

meeting,  or  a  solved  problem.  Why  have  we  none 
for  books,  those  spiritual  repasts  —  a  grace  before 
Milton  —  a  grace  before  Shakspeare  —  a  devotional 
exercise  proper  to  be  said  before  reading  the  Fairy- 
Queen? —  but,  the  received  ritual  having  prescribed 
these  forms  to  the  solitary  ceremony  of  manducation, 
I  shall  confine  my  observations  to  the  experience 
which  I  have  had  of  the  grace,  properly  so  called ; 
commending  my  new  scheme  for  extension  to  a 
niche  in  the  grand  philosophical,  poetical,  and  per- 
chance in  part  heretical,  liturgy,  now  compiling  by 
my  friend  Homo  Humanus,  for  the  use  of  a  certain 
snug  congregation  of  Utopian  Rabelaesian  Christians, 
no  matter  where  assembled. 

The  form  then  of  the  benediction  before  eating 
has  its  beauty  at  a  poor  man's  table,  or  at  the  simple 
and  unprovocative  repasts  of  children.  It  is  here 
that  the  grace  becomes  exceedingly  graceful.  The 
indigent  man,  who  hardly  knows  whether  he  shall 
have  a  meal  the  next  day  or  not,  sits  down  to  his 
fare  with  a  present  sense  of  the  blessing,  which  can 
be  but  feebly  acted  by  the  rich,  into  whose  minds 
the  conception  of  wanting  a  dinner  could  never,  but 
by  some  -extreme  theory,  have  entered.  The  proper 
end  of  food  —  the  animal  sustenance  —  is  barely  con- 
templated by  them.  The  poor  man's  bread  is  his 
daily  bread,  literally  his  bread  for  the  day.  Their 
courses  are  perennial. 


IQO  GRACE   BEFORE   MEAT. 

Again,  the  plainest  diet  seems  the  fittest  to  be 
preceded  by  the  grace.  That  which  is  least  stimula- 
tive to  appetite,  leaves  the  mmd  most  free  for  foreign 
considerations.  A  man  may  feel  thankful,  heartily 
thankful,  over  a  dish  of  plain  mutton  with  turnips, 
and  have  leisure  to  reflect  upon  the  ordinance  and 
institution  of  eating;  when  he  shall  confess  a  per- 
turbation of  mind,  inconsistent  with  the  purposes  of 
the  grace,  at  the  presence  of  venison  or  turtle. 
When  I  have  sate  (a  rarus  hospes)  at  rich  men's 
tables,  with  the  savoury  soup  and  messes  steaming 
up  the  nostrils,  and  moistening  the  lips  of  the  guests 
with  desire  and  a  distracted  choice,  I  have  felt  the 
introduction  of  that  ceremony  to  be  unseasonable. 
With  the  ravenous  orgasm  upon  you,  it  seems  im- 
pertinent to  interpose  a  religious  sentiment.  It  is  a 
confusion  of  purpose  to  mutter  out  praises  from  a 
mouth  that  waters.  The  heats  of  epicurism  put  out 
the  gentle  flame  of  devotion.  The  incense  which 
rises  round  is  pagan,  and  the  belly-god  intercepts  it 
for  his  own.  The  very  excess  of  the  provision  be- 
yond the  needs,  takes  away  all  sense  of  proportion 
between  the  end  and  means.  The  giver  is  veiled  by 
his  gifts.  You  are  startled  at  the  injustice  of  return- 
ing thanks  —  for  what  ?  —  for  having  too  much,  while 
so  many  starve.     It  is  to  praise  the  Gods  amiss. 

I  have  observed  this  awkwardness  felt,  scarce  con- 
sciously  perhaps,   by   the   good   man  who  says  the 


GRACE  BEFORE  MEAT.  19 1 

grace.  I  have  seen  it  in  clergymen  and  others  —  a 
sort  of  shame  —  a  sense  of  the  co-presence  of  cir- 
cumstances which  unhallow  the  blessing.  After  a 
devotional  tone  put  on  for  a  few  seconds,  how  rapidly 
the  speaker  will  fall  into  his  common  voice,  helping 
himself  or  his  neighbour,  as  if  to  get  rid  of  some 
uneasy  sensation  of  hypocrisy.  Not  that  the  good 
man  was  a  hypocrite,  or  was  not  most  conscientious 
in  the  discharge  of  the  duty;  but  he  felt  in  his  in- 
most mind  the  incompatibility  of  the  scene  and  the 
viands  before  him  with  the  exercise  of  a  calm  and 
rational  gratitude. 

I  hear  somebody  exclaim,  —  Would  you  have 
Christians  sit  down  at  table,  like  hogs  to  their  troughs, 
without  remembering  the  Giver?  —  no  —  I  would 
have  them  sit  down  as  Christians,  remembering  the 
Giver,  and  less  like  hogs.  Or  if  their  appetites  must 
run  riot,  and  they  must  pamper  themselves  with 
delicacies  for  which  east  and  west  are  ransacked,  I 
would  have  them  postpone  their  benediction  to  a 
fitter  season,  when  appetite  is  laid;  when  the  still 
small  voice  can  be  heard,  and  the  reason  of  the 
grace  returns  —  with  temperate  diet  and  restricted 
dishes.  Gluttony  and  surfeiting  are  no  proper  occa- 
sions for  thanksgiving.  When  Jeshurun  waxed  fat, 
we  read  that  he  kicked.  Virgil  knew  the  harpy- 
nature  better,  when  he  put  into  the  mouth  of  Celaeno 
any  thing  but  a  blessing.     We  may  be  gratefully  sen- 


192  GRACE  BEFORE   MEAT. 

sible  of  the  deliciousness  of  some  kinds  of  food  be- 
yond others,  though  that  is  a  meaner  and  inferior 
gratitude :  but  the  proper  object  of  the  grace  is  sus- 
tenance, not  relishes;  daily  bread,  not  delicacies; 
the  means  of  life,  and  not  the  means  of  pampering 
the  carcass.  With  what  frame  or  composure,  I 
wonder,  can  a  city  chaplain  pronounce  his  benedic- 
tion at  some  great  Hall  feast,  when  he  knows  that 
his  last  concluding  pious  word  —  and  that,  in  all 
probability,  the  sacred  name  which  he  preaches  — 
is  but  the  signal  for  so  many  impatient  harpies  to 
commence  their  foul  orgies,  with  as  little  sense  of 
true  thankfulness  (which  is  temperance)  as  those 
Virgilian  fowl !  It  is  well  if  the  good  man  himself 
does  not  feel  his  devotions  a  little  clouded,  those 
foggy  sensuous  steams  mingling  with  and  polluting 
the  pure  altar  sacrifice. 

The  severest  satire  upon  full  tables  and  surfeits  is 
the  banquet  which  Satan,  in  the  Paradise  Regained, 
provides  for  a  temptation  in  the  wilderness : 

A  table  richly  spread  in  regal  mode, 
With  dishes  piled,  and  meats  of  noblest  sort 
And  savour  ;  beasts  of  chase,  or  fowl  of  game, 
In  pastry  built,  or  from  the  spit,  or  boiled, 
Gris-amber-steamed ;  all  fish  from  sea  or  shore. 
Freshet  or  purling  brook,  for  which  was  drained 
Pontus,  and  Lucrine  bay,  and  Afric  coast. 

The  Tempter,  I  warrant  you,  thought  these  cates 
would  go  down  without  the  recommendatory  preface 


GRACE  BEFORE  MEAT.  1 93 

of  a  benediction.  They  are  like  to  be  short  graces 
where  the  devil  plays  the  host.  —  I  am  afraid  the 
poet  wants  his  usual  decorum  in  this  place.  Was 
he  thinking  of  the  old  Roman  luxury,  or  of  a  gaudy 
day  at  Cambridge?  This  was  a  temptation  fitter  for 
a  Pleliogabalus.  The  whole  banquet  is  too  civic  and 
culinary,  and  the  accompaniments  altogether  a  profa- 
nation of  that  deep,  abstracted,  holy  scene.  The 
mighty  artillery  of  sauces,  which  the  cook-fiend  con- 
jures up,  is  out  of  proportion  to  the  simple  wants  and 
plain  hunger  of  the  guest.  He  that  disturbed  him 
in  his  dreams,  from  his  dreams  might  have  been 
taught  better.  To  the  temperate  fantasies  of  the 
famished  Son  of  God,  what  sort  of  feasts  presented 
themselves  ?  —  He  dreamed  indeed, 


As  appetite  is  wont  to  dream, 


Of  meats  and  drinks,  nature's  refreshment  sweet. 

But  what  meats  ?  — 

Him  thought,  he  by  the  brook  of  Cherith  stood. 
And  saw  the  ravens  with  their  horny  beaks 
Food  to  Elijah  bringing,  even  and  morn ; 
Though  ravenous,  taught  to  abstain  from  what  they  brought ; 
He  saw  the  prophet  also  how  he  fled 
Into  the  desert,  and  how  there  he  slept 
Under  a  juniper  ;  then  how  awaked 
He  found  his  supper  on  the  coals  prepared. 
And  by  the  angel  was  bid  rise  and  eat. 
And  ate  the  second  time  after  repose, 
The  strength  whereof  sufficed  him  forty  days  : 
Sometimes,  that  with  Elijah  he  partook, 
Or  as  a  guest  with  Daniel  at  his  pulse. 
13 


194  GRACE  BEFORE  MEAT. 

Nothing  in  Milton  is  finelier  fancied  than  these  tem- 
perate dreams  of  the  divine  Hungerer.  To  which  of 
these  two  visionary  banquets,  think  you,  would  the 
introduction  of  what  is  called  the  grace  have  been 
most  fitting  and  pertinent? 

Theoretically  I  am  no  enemy  to  graces ;  but  prac- 
tically I  own  that  (before  meat  especially)  they  seem 
to  involve  something  awkward  and  unseasonable. 
Our  appetites,  of  one  or  another  kind,  are  excellent 
spurs  to  our  reason,  which  might  otherwise  but  feebly 
set  about  the  great  ends  of  preserving  and  continu- 
ing the  species.  They  are  fit  blessings  to  be  con- 
templated at  a  distance  with  a  becoming  gratitude ; 
but  the  moment  of  appetite  (the  judicious  reader 
will  apprehend  me)  is,  perhaps,  the  least  fit  season 
for  that  exercise.  The  Quakers  who  go  about  their 
business,  of  every  description,  with  more  calmness 
than  we,  have  more  title  to  the  use  of  these  bene- 
dictory prefaces.  I  have  always  admired  their  silent 
grace,  and  the  more  because  I  have  observed  their 
applications  to  the  meat  and  drink  following  to  be 
less  passionate  and  sensual  than  ours.  They  are 
neither  gluttons  nor  wine-bibbers  as  a  people.  They 
eat,  as  a  horse  bolts  his  chopt  hay,  with  indifference, 
calmness,  and  cleanly  circumstances.  They  neither 
grease  nor  slop  themselves.  When  I  see  a  citizen  in 
his  bib  and  tucker,  I  cannot  imagine  it  a  surpHce. 

I  am  no  Quaker  at  my  food.     I  confess  I  am  not 


GRACE  BEFORE  MEAT.  195 

indifferent  to  the  kinds  of  it.  Those  unctuous  morsels 
of  deer's  flesh  were  not  made  to  be  received  with 
dispassionate  services.  I  hate  a  man  who  swallows 
it,  affecting  not  to  know  what  he  is  eating.  I  sus- 
pect his  taste  in  higher  matters.  I  shrink  instinct- 
ively from  one  who  professes  to  Hke  minced  veal. 
There  is  a  physiognomical  character  in  the  tastes  for 

food.     C holds  that  a  man  cannot  have  a  pure 

mind  who  refuses  apple-dumplings.  I  am  not  cer- 
tain but  he  is  right.  With  the  decay  of  my  first 
innocence,  I  confess  a  less  and  less  relish  daily  for 
those  innocuous  cates.  The  whole  vegetable  tribe 
have  lost  their  gust  with  me.  Only  I  stick  to  as- 
paragus, which  still  seems  to  inspire  gentle  thoughts. 
I  am  impatient  and  querulous  under  culinary  dis- 
appointments, as  to  come  home  at  the  dinner  hour, 
for  instance,  expecting  some  savoury  mess,  and  to 
find  one  quite  tasteless  and  sapidless.  Butter  ill 
melted  —  that  commonest  of  kitchen  failures  —  puts 
me  beside  my  tenour.  —  The  author  of  the  Rambler 
ased  to  make  inarticulate  animal  noises  over  a  favour- 
ite food.  Was  this  the  music  quite  proper  to  be 
preceded  by  the  grace?  or  would  the  pious  man 
have  done  better  to  postpone  his  devotions  to  a 
season  when  the  blessing  might  be  contemplated 
with  less  perturbation?  I  quarrel  with  no  man*s 
tastes,  nor  would  set  my  thin  face  against  those  ex- 
cellent things,  in  their  way,  jollity  and  feasting.     But 


196  GRACE   BEFORE   MEAT. 

as  these  exercises,  however  laudable,  have  little  in 
them  of  grace  or  gracefulness,  a  man  should  be  sure, 
before  he  ventures  so  to  grace  them,  that  while  he 
is  pretending  his  devotions  otherwhere,  he  is  not 
secretly  kissing  his  hand  to  some  great  fish  —  his 
Dagon  —  with  a  special  consecration  of  no  ark  but 
the  fat  tureen  before  him.  Graces  are  the  sweet  pre- 
luding strains  to  the  banquets  of  angels  and  children ; 
to  the  roots  and  severer  repasts  of  the  Chartreuse ; 
to  the  slender,  but  not  slenderly  acknowledged, 
refection  of  the  poor  and  humble  man :  but  at 
the  heaped-up  boards  of  the  pampered  and  the 
luxurious  they  become  of  dissonant  mood,  less  timed 
and  tuned  to  the  occasion,  methinks,  than  the  noise 
of  those  better  befitting  organs  would  be,  which 
children  hear  tales  of,  at  Hog's  Norton.  We  sit  too 
long  at  our  meals,  or  are  too  curious  in  the  study  of 
them,  or  too  disordered  in  our  application  to  them, 
or  engross  too  great  a  portion  of  those  good 
things  (which  should  be  common)  to  our  share,  to 
be  able  with  any  grace  to  say  grace.  To  be  thank- 
ful for  what  we  grasp  exceeding  our  proportion  is  to 
add  hypocrisy  to  injustice.  A  lurking  sense  of  this 
truth  is  what  makes  the  performance  of  this  duty  so 
cold  and  spiritless  a  service  at  most  tables.  In 
houses  where  the  grace  is  as  indispensable  as  the 
napkin,  who  has  not  seen  that  never  settled  question 
arise,  as  to  who  shall  say  it;  while  the  good  man  of 


GRACE  BEFORE  MEAT.  1 97 

the  house  and  the  visitor  clergyman,  or  some  other 
guest  behke  of  next  authority  from  years  or  gravity, 
shall  be  bandying  about  the  office  between  them  as 
a  matter  of  compliment,  each  of  them  not  unwiUing 
to  shift  the  awkward  burthen  of  an  equivocal  duty 
from  his  own  shoulders? 

I  once  drank  tea  in  company  with  two  Methodist 
divines  of  different  persuasions,  whom  it  was  my  for- 
tune to  introduce  to  each  other  for  the  first  time 
that  evening.  Before  the  first  cup  was  handed  round, 
one  of  these  reverend  gentlemen  put  it  to  the  other, 
with  all  due  solemnity,  whether  he  chose  to  say  any 
thing.  It  seems  it  is  the  custom  with  some  sectaries 
to  put  up  a  short  prayer  before  this  meal  also.  His 
reverend  brother  did  not  at  first  quite  apprehend 
him,  but  upon  an  explanation,  with  little  less  im- 
portance he  made  answer,  that  it  was  not  a  custom 
known  in  his  church  :  in  which  courteous  evasion  the 
other  acquiescing  for  good  manner's  sake,  or  in  com- 
pliance with  a  weak  brother,  the  supplementary  or 
tea-grace  was  waived  altogether.  With  what  spirit 
might  not  Lucian  have  painted  two  priests,  of  his 
religion,  playing  into  each  other's  hands  the  com- 
pliment of  performing  or  omitting  a  sacrifice,  —  the 
hungry  God  meantime,  doubtful  of  his  incense,  with 
expectant  nostrils  hovering  over  the  two  flamens, 
and  (as  between  two  stools)  going  away  in  the  end 
without  his  supper. 


198  GRACE   rJEFORE   MEAT. 

A  short  form  upon  these  occasions  is  felt  to  want 
reverence ;  a  long  one,  I  am  afraid,  cannot  escape 
the  charge  of  impertinence.  I  do  not  quite  approve 
of  the  epigrammatic  conciseness  with  which  that 
equivocal  wag  (but  my  pleasant  school-fellow) 
C.  V.  L.,  when  importuned  for  a  grace,  used  to  in- 
quire, first  slyly  leering  down  the  table,  "Is  there 
no  clergyman  here?"  —  significantly  adding,  "thank 
G — ."  Nor  do  I  think  our  old  form  at  school  quite 
pertinent,  where  we  were  used  to  preface  our  bald 
bread  and  cheese  suppers  with  a  preamble,  connect- 
ing with  that  humble  blessing  a  recognition  of 
benefits  the  most  awful  and  overwhelming  to  the 
imagination  which  religion  has  to  offer.  Non  tunc 
illis  erat  locus.  I  remember  we  were  put  to  it  to 
reconcile  the  phrase  "  good  creatures,"  upon  which 
the  blessing  rested,  with  the  fare  set  before  us,  wil- 
fully understanding  that  expression  in  a  low  and 
animal  sense,  —  till  some  one  recalled  a  legend, 
which  told  how  in  the  golden  days  of  Christ's,  the 
young  Hospitallers  were  wont  to  have  smoking  joints 
of  roast  meat  upon  their  nightly  boards,  till  some 
pious  benefactor,  commiserating  the  decencies,  rather 
than  the  palates,  of  the  children,  commuted  our  flesh 
for  garments,  and  gave  us  —  horresco  referens  — 
trowsers  instead  of  mutton. 


MY   FIRST   PLAY. 


At  the  north  end  of  Cross-court  there  yet  stands  a 
portal,  of  some  architectural  pretensions,  though  re- 
duced to  humble  use,  serving  at  present  for  an  en- 
trance to  a  printing-office.  This  old  door-way,  if  you 
are  young,  reader,  you  may  not  know  was  the  iden- 
tical pit  entrance  to  Old  Drury  —  Garrick's  Drury  — 
all  of  it  that  is  left.  I  never  pass  it  without  shaking 
some  forty  years  from  off  my  shoulders,  recurring  to 
the  evening  when  I  passed  through  it  to  see  my  first 
play.  The  afternoon  had  been  wet,  and  the  condition 
of  our  going  (the  elder  folks  and  myself)  was,  that 
the  rain  should  cease.  With  what  a  beating  heart  did 
I  watch  from  the  window  the  puddles,  from  the  still- 
ness of  which  I  was  taught  to  prognosticate  the  desired 
cessation  !  I  seem  to  remember  the  last  spurt,  and 
the  glee  with  which  I  ran  to  announce  it. 

We  went  with  orders,  which  my  godfather  F.  had 
sent  us.  He  kept  the  oil  shop  (now  Davies's)  at 
the  comer  of  Featherstone-building,  in  Holborn.  F. 
was  a  tall  grave  person,  lofty  in  speech,  and  had  pre- 
tensions above  his  rank.     He  associated  in  those  days 


200  MY  FIRST   PLAY. 

with  John  Palmer,  the  comedian,  whose  gait  and 
bearing  he  seemed  to  copy ;  if  John  (which  is  quite 
as  Ukely)  did  not  rather  borrow  somewhat  of  his 
manner  from  my  godfather.  He  was  also  known  to, 
and  visited  by,  Sheridan.  It  was  to  his  house  in  Hol- 
born  that  young  Brinsley  brought  his  first  wife  on  her 
elopement  with  him  from  a  boarding-school  at  Bath 
—  the  beautiful  Maria  Linley.  My  parents  were 
present  (over  a  quadrille  table)  when  he  arrived  in 
the  evening  with  his  harmonious  charge.  —  From 
either  of  these  connexions  it  may  be  inferred  that  my 
godfather  could  command  an  order  for  the  then 
Drury-lane  theatre  at  pleasure  —  and,  indeed,  a  pretty 
liberal  issue  of  those  cheap  billets,  in  Brinsley' s  easy 
autograph,  I  have  heard  him  say  was  the  sole  remun- 
eration which  he  had  received  for  many  years'  nightly 
illumination  of  the  orchestra  and  various  avenues  of 
that  theatre  —  and  he  was  content  it  should  be  so. 
The  honour  of  Sheridan's  familiarity  —  or  supposed 
familiarity  —  was  better  to  my  godfather  than  money. 
F.  was  the  most  gentlemanly  of  oilmen ;  grandilo- 
quent, yet  courteous.  His  delivery  of  the  commonest 
matters  of  fact  was  Ciceronian.  He  had  two  Latin 
words  almost  constantly  in  his  mouth  (how  odd 
sounds  Latin  from  an  oilman's  lips  !),  which  my  better 
knowledge  since  has  enabled  me  to  correct.  In  strict 
pronunciation  they  should  have  been  sounded  vice 
versa  —  but  in  those  young  years  they  impressed  me 


MY  FIRST  PLAY.  201 

with  more  awe  than  they  would  now  do,  read  aright 
from  Seneca  or  Varro  —  in  his  own  pecuUar  pronun- 
ciation, monosyllabically  elaborated,  or  Anglicized, 
into  something  like  verse  verse.  By  an  imposing 
manner,  and  the  help  of  these  distorted  syllables,  he 
climbed  (but  that  was  little)  to  the  highest  parochial 
honours  which  St.  Andrew's  has  to  bestow. 

He  is  dead  —  and  thus  much  I  thought  due  to  his 
memory,  both  for  my  first  orders  (little  wondrous 
talismans  !  —  slight  keys,  and  insignificant  to  outward 
sight,  but  opening  to  me  more  than  Arabian  para- 
dises !)  and  moreover,  that  by  his  testamentatary  be- 
neficence I  came  into  possession  of  the  only  landed 
property  which  I  could  ever  call  my  own  —  situate 
near  the  road-way  village  of  pleasant  Puckeridge,  in 
Hertfordshire.  When  I  journeyed  down  to  take  pos- 
session, and  planted  foot  on  my  own  ground,  the 
stately  habits  of  the  donor  descended  upon  me,  and 
I  strode  (shall  I  confess  the  vanity  ?)  with  larger  paces 
over  my  allotment  of  three  quarters  of  an  acre,  with 
its  commodious  mansion  in  the  midst,  with  the  feeling 
of  an  English  freeholder  that  all  betwixt  sky  and 
centre  was  my  own.  The  estate  has  passed  into  more 
prudent  hands,  and  nothing  but  an  agrarian  can 
restore  it. 

In  those  days  were  pit  orders.  Beshrew  the  un- 
comfortable manager  who  abolished  them  !  —  with 
one  of  these  we  went.     I  remember  the  waiting  at 


202  MY    FIRST   PLAY. 

the  door  —  not  that  which  is  left  —  but  between  that 
and  an  inner  door  in  shelter  —  O  when  shall  I  be 
such  an  expectant  again  !  —  with  the  cry  of  nonpa- 
reils, an  indispensable  play-house  accompanient  in 
those  days.  As  near  as  I  can  recollect,  the  fashion- 
able pronunciation  of  the  theatrical  fruiteresses  then 
was,  "  Chase  some  oranges,  chase  some  numparels, 
chase  a  bill  of  the  play;  " — chase  pro  chuse.  But 
when  we  got  in,  and  I  beheld  the  green  curtain  that 
veiled  a  heaven  to  my  imagination,  which  was  soon 
to  be  disclosed  —  the  breathless  anticipations  I  en- 
dured !  I  had  seen  something  like  it  in  the  plate 
prefixed  to  Troilus  and  Cressida,  in  Rowe's  Shak- 
speare  —  the  tent  scene  with  Diomede  —  and  a  sight 
of  that  plate  can  always  bring  back  in  a  measure  the 
feeling  of  that  evening.  —  The  boxes  at  that  time,  full 
of  well-dressed  women  of  quality,  projected  over  the 
pit;  and  the  pilasters  reaching  down  were  adorned 
with  a  glistering  substance  (I  know  not  what)  under 
glass  (as  it  seemed),  resembling  —  a  homely  fancy  — 
but  I  judged  it  to  be  sugar-candy  —  yet,  to  my  raised 
imagination,  divested  of  its  homelier  qualities,  it  ap- 
peared a  glorified  candy  !  —  The  orchestra  lights  at 
length  arose,  those  "  fair  Auroras  !  "  Once  the  bell 
sounded.  It  was  to  ring  out  yet  once  again  —  and, 
incapable  of  the  anticipation,  I  reposed  my  shut  eyes 
in  a  sort  of  resignation  upon  the  maternal  lap.  It 
rang   the  second    time.      The  curtain   drew  up  —  I 


MY  FIRST  PLAY.  203 

was  not  past  six  years  old  —  and  the  play  was  Ar- 
taxerxes  ! 

I  had  dabbled  a  little  in  the  Universal  History  — 
the  ancient  part  of  it  —  and  here  was  the  court  of 
Persia.  It  was  being  admitted  to  a  sight  of  the  past. 
I  took  no  proper  interest  in  the  action  going  on,  for  I 
understood  not  its  import  —  but  I  heard  the  word 
Darius,  and  I  was  in  the  midst  of  Daniel.  All  feeling 
was  absorbed  in  vision.  Gorgeous  vests,  gardens, 
palaces,  princesses,  passed  before  me.  I  knew  not 
players.  I  was  in  Persepolis  for  the  time ;  and  the 
burning  idol  of  their  devotion  almost  converted  me 
into  a  worshipper.  I  was  awe-struck,  and  believed 
those  significations  to  be  something  more  than  ele- 
mental fires.  It  was  all  enchantment  and  a  dream. 
No  such  pleasure  has  since  visited  me  but  in  dreams. 
—  Harlequin's  Invasion  followed  ;  where,  I  remember, 
the  transformation  of  the  magistrates  into  reverend 
beldams  seemed  to  me  a  piece  of  grave  historic  justice, 
and  the  tailor  carrying  his  own  head  to  be  as  sober  a 
verity  as  the  legend  of  St.  Denys. 

The  next  play  to  which  I  was  taken  was  the  Lady 
of  the  Manor,  of  which,  with  the  exception  of  some 
scenery,  very  faint  traces  are  left  in  my  memory.  It 
was  followed  by  a  pantomime,  called  Lun's  Ghost  — 
a  satiric  touch,  I  apprehend,  upon  Rich,  not  long  since 
dead  —  but  to  my  apprehension  (too  sincere  for 
satire),  Lun  was  as  remote  a  piece  of  antiquity  as  Lud 


204  ^^   FIRST   PLAY. 

—  the  father  of  a  line  of  Harlequins  —  transmitting 
his  dagger  of  lath  (the  wooden  sceptre)  through 
countless  ages.  I  saw  the  primeval  Motley  come  from 
his  silent  tomb  in  a  ghastly  vest  of  white  patch-work, 
like  the  apparition  of  a  dead  rainbow.  So  Harlequins 
(thought  I)  look  when  they  are  dead. 

My  third  play  followed  in  quick  succession.  It  was 
the  Way  of  the  World.  I  think  I  must  have  sat  at  it 
as  grave  as  a  judge ;  for,  I  remember,  the  hysteric 
affectations  of  good  Lady  Wishfort  affected  me  like 
some  solemn  tragic  passion.  Robinson  Crusoe  fol- 
lowed ;  in  which  Crusoe,  man  Friday,  and  the  parrot, 
were  as  good  and  authentic  as  in  the  story.  —  The 
clownery  and  pantaloonery  of  these  pantomimes  have 
clean  passed  out  of  my  head.  I  believe,  I  no  more 
laughed  at  them,  than  at  the  same  age  I  should  have 
been  disposed  to  laugh  at  the  grotesque  Gothic  heads 
(seeming  to  me  then  replete  with  devout  meaning) 
that  gape,  and  grin,  in  stone  around  the  inside  of  the 
old  Round  Church  (my  church)  of  the  Templars. 

I  saw  these  plays  in  the  season  1781-2,  when  I  was 
from  six  to  seven  years  old.  After  the  intervention 
of  six  or  seven  other  years  (for  at  school  all  play-going 
was  inhibited)  I  again  entered  the  doors  of  a  theatre. 
That  old  Artaxerxes  evening  had  never  done  ringing 
in  my  fancy.  I  expected  the  same  feelings  to  come 
again  with  the  same  occasion.  But  we  differ  from 
ourselves  less  at  sixty  and  sixteen,  than  the  latter  does 


MY   FIRST   PLAY.  20$ 

from  six.     In  that  interval  what  had  I  not  lost !     At 

the  first  period  I  knew  nothing,  understood  nothing, 

discriminated  nothing.     I  felt  all,  loved  all,  wondered 

all  — 

Was  nourished,  I  could  not  tell  how  — 

I  had  left  the  temple  a  devotee,  and  was  returned  a 
rationalist.  The  same  things  were  there  materially ; 
but  the  emblem,  the  reference,  was  gone  !  —  The 
green  curtain  was  no  longer  a  veil,  drawn  between  two 
worlds,  the  unfolding  of  which  was  to  bring  back  past 
ages,  to  present  "  a  royal  ghost,"  —  but  *  a  certain 
quantity  of  green  baize,  which  was  to  separate  the 
audience  for  a  given  time  from  certain  of  their  fellow- 
men  who  were  to  come  forward  and  pretend  those 
parts.  The  lights  —  the  orchestra  lights  —  came  up  a 
clumsy  machinery.  The  first  ring,  and  the  second 
ring,  was  now  but  a  trick  of  the  prompter's  bell  — 
whjch  had  been,  like  the  note  of  the  cuckoo,  a  phantom 
of  a  voice,  no  hand  seen  or  guessed  at  which  minis- 
tered to  its  warning.  The  actors  were  men  and 
women  painted.  I  thought  the  fault  was  in  them; 
but  it  was  in  myself,  and  the  alteration  which  those 
many  centuries  —  of  six  short  twelvemonths  —  had 
wrought  in  me.  —  Perhaps  it  was  fortunate  for  me 
that  the  play  of  the  evening  was  but  an  indifferent 
comedy,  as  it  gave  me  time  to  crop  some  unreason- 
able expectations,  which  might  have  interfered  with 
the  genuine  emotions  with  which  I  was  soon  after 


206  MY   FIRST  PLAY. 

enabled  to  enter  upon  the  first  appearance  to  me  of 
Mrs.  Siddons  in  Isabella.  Comparison  and  retro- 
spection soon  yielded  to  the  present  attraction  of  the 
scene ;  and  the  theatre  became  to  me,  upon  a  new 
stock,  the  most  delightful  of  recreations. 


DREAM-CHILDREN; 
A  REVERIE. 


Children  love  to  listen  to  stories  about  their  elders, 
when  they  were  children ;  to  stretch  their  imagination 
to  the  conception  of  a  traditionary  great-uncle,  or 
grandame,  whom  they  never  saw.  It  was  in  this 
spirit  that  my  little  ones  crept  about  me  the  other 
evening  to  hear  about  their  great-grandmother  Field, 
who  lived  in  a  great  house  in  Norfolk  (a  hundred 
times  bigger  than  that  in  which  they  and  papa  lived) 
which  had  been  the  scene  —  so  at  least  it  was  gener- 
ally believed  in  that  part  of  the  country  —  of  the 
tragic  incidents  which  they  had  lately  become  familiar 
with  from  the  ballad  of  the  Children  in  the  Wood. 
Certain  it  is  that  the  whole  story  of  the  children  and 
their  cruel  uncle  was  to  be  seen  fairly  carved  out  in 
wood  upon  the  chimney-piece  of  the  great  hall,  the 
whole  story  down  to  the  Robin  Redbreasts,  till  a 
foolish  rich  person  pulled  it  down  to  set  up  a  marble 
one  of  modern  invention  in  its  stead,  with  no  story 
upon  it.     Here  Alice  put  out  one  of  her  dear  mother's 


208  DREAM-CHILDREN;   A   REVERIE. 

looks,  too  tender  to  be  called  upbraiding.  Then  I 
went  on  to  say,  how  reHgious  and  how  good  their 
great-grandmother  Field  was,  how  beloved  and  re- 
spected by  every  body,  though  she  was  not  indeed 
the  mistress  of  this  great  house,  but  had  only  the 
charge  of  it  (and  yet  in  some  respects  she  might  be 
said  to  be  the  mistress  of  it  too)  committed  to  her  by 
the  owner,  who  preferred  living  in  a  newer  and  more 
fashionable  mansion  which  he  had  purchased  some- 
where in  the  adjoining  county ;  but  still  she  lived  in 
it  in  a  manner  as  if  it  had  been  her  own,  and  kept  up 
the  dignity  of  the  great  house  in  a  sort  while  she  lived, 
which  afterwards  came  to  decay,  and  was  nearly 
pulled  down,  and  all  its  old  ornaments  stripped  and 
carried  away  to  the  owner's  other  house,  where  they 
were  set  up,  and  looked  as  awkward  as  if  some  one 
were  to  carry  away  the  old  tombs  they  had  seen  lately 
at  the  Abbey,  and  stick  them  up  in  Lady  C.'s  tawdry 
gilt  drawing-room.  Here  John  smiled,  as  much  as  to 
say,  "  that  would  be  foolish  indeed."  And  then  I  told 
how,  when  she  came  to  die,  her  funeral  was  attended 
by  a  concourse  of  all  the  poor,  and  some  of  the  gentry 
too,  of  the  neighbourhood  for  many  miles  round,  to 
show  their  respect  for  her  memory,  because  she  had 
been  such  a  good  and  religious  woman;  so  good 
indeed  that  she  knew  all  the  Psaltery  by  heart,  ay, 
and  a  great  part  of  the  Testament  besides.  Here 
little  Alice  spread  her  hands.     Then  I  told  what  a 


DREAM-CHILDREN;  A   REVERIE.  209 

tall,  upright,  graceful  person  their  great-grandmother 
Field  once  was ;  and  how  in  her  youth  she  was  es- 
teemed the  best  dancer  —  here  Alice's  little  right  foot 
played  an  involuntary  movement,  till,  upon  my  look- 
ing grave,  it  desisted  —  the  best  dancer,  I  was  saying, 
in  the  county,  till  a  cruel  disease,  called  a  cancer, 
came,  and  bowed  her  down  with  pain ;  but  it  could 
never  bend  her  good  spirits,  or  make  them  stoop,  but 
they  were  still  upright,  because  she  was  so  good  and 
religious..  4' Then  I  told  how  she  was  used  to  sleep  by 
herself  in  a  lone  chamber  of  the  great  lone  house ; 
and  how  she  believed  that  an  apparition  of  two  infants 
was  to  be  seen  at  midnight  gliding  up  and  down  the 
great  staircase  near  where  she  slept,  but  she  said 
"those  innocents  would  do  her  no  harm;  "  and  how 
frightened  I  used  to  be,  though  in  those  days  I  had 
my  maid  to  sleep  with  me,  because  I  was  never  half 
so  good  or  religious  as  she  —  and  yet  I  never  saw  the 
infants.  Here  John  expanded  all  his  eye-brows  and 
tried  to  look  courageous.  Then  I  told  how  good  she 
was  to  all  her  grand-children,  having  us  to  the  great- 
house  in  the  holydays,  where  I  in  particular  used  to 
spend  many  hours  by  myself,  in  gazing  upon  the  old 
busts  of  the  Twelve  Caesars,  that  had  been  Emperors  of 
Rome,  till  the  old  marble  heads  would  seem  to  live 
again,  or  I  to  be  turned  into  marble  with  them ;  how 
I  never  could  be  tired  with  roaming  about  that  huge 
mansion,  with  its  vast  empty  rooms,  with  their  wom- 
14 


2IO  DREAM-CHILDREN;   A   REVERIE. 

out  hangings,  fluttering  tapestry,  and  carved  oaken 
pannels,  with  the  gilding  almost  rubbed  out  —  some- 
times in  the  spacious  old-fashioned  gardens,  which  I 
had  almost  to  myself,  unless  when  now  and  then  a 
solitary  gardening  man  would  cross  me  —  and  how 
the  nectarines  and  peaches  hung  upon  the  walls, 
without  my  ever  offering  to  pluck  them,  because  they 
were  forbidden  fruit,  unless  now  and  then,  —  and  be- 
cause I  had  more  pleasure  in  strolling  about  among 
the  old  melancholy-looking  yew  trees,  or  the  firs,  and 
picking  up  the  red  berries,  and  the  fir  apples,  which 
were  good  for  nothing  but  to  look  at  —  or  in  lying 
about  upon  the  fresh  grass,  with  all  the  fine  garden 
smells  around  me  —  or  basking  in  the  orangery,  till  I 
could  almost  fancy  myself  ripening  too  along  with  the 
oranges  and  the  limes  in  that  grateful  warmth  —  or 
in  watching  the  dace  that  darted  to  and  fro  in  the 
fish-pond,  at  the  bottom  of  the  garden,  with  here  and 
there  a  great  sulky  pike  hanging  midway  down  the 
water  in  silent  state,  as  if  it  mocked  at  their  impertinent 
friskings,  —  I  had  more  pleasure  in  these  busy-idle 
diversions  than  in  all  the  sweet  flavours  of  peaches, 
nectarines,  oranges,  and  such  like  common  baits  of 
children.  Here  John  slyly  deposited  back  upon  the 
plate  a  bunch  of  grapes,  which,  not  unobserved  by 
Alice,  he  had  meditated  dividing  with  her,  and  both 
seemed  willing  to  relinquish  them  for  the  present  as 
irrelevant.     Then   in    somewhat  a  more    heightened 


DREAM-CHILDREN;   A   REVERIE.  211 

tone,   I  told   how,  though   their  grandmother   Field 
loved  all  her  grand-children,  yet  in  an  especial  manner 

she  might  be  said  to  love  their  uncle,  John  L , 

because  he  was  so  handsome  and  spirited  a  youth, 
and  a  king  to  the  rest  of  us ;  and,  instead  of  moping 
about  in  solitary  comers,  like  some  of  us,  he  would 
mount  the  most  mettlesome  horse  he  could  get,  when 
but  an  imp  no  bigger  than  themselves,  and  make  it 
carry  him  half  over  the  county  in  a  morning,  and  join 
the  hunters  when  there  were  any  out  —  and  yet  he 
loved  the  old  great  house  and  gardens  too,  but  had 
too  much  spirit  to  be  always  pent  up  within  their 
boundaries  —  and  how  their  uncle  grew  up  to  man's 
estate  as  brave  as  he  was  handsome,  to  the  admiration 
of  every  body,  but  of  their  great-grandmother  Field 
most  especially ;  and  how  he  used  to  carry  me  upon 
his  back  when  I  was  a  lame-footed  boy — for  he  was 
a  good  bit  older  than  me  —  many  a  mile  when  I  could 
not  walk  for  pain ;  —  and  how  in  after  Hfe  he  became 
lame-footed  top,  and  I  did  not  always  (I  fear)  make 
allowances  enough  for  him  when  he  was  impatient, 
and  in  pain,  nor  remember  sufificiently  how  consid- 
erate he  had  been  to  me  when  I  was  lame- footed ; 
and  how  when  he  died,  though  he  had  not  been  dead 
an  hour,  it  seemed  as  if  he  had  died  a  great  while  ago, 
such  a  distance  there  is  betwixt  life  and  death ;  and 
how  I  bore  his  death  as  I  thought  pretty  well  at  first, 
but  afterwards  it  haunted  and  haunted  me  ;  and  though 


212  DREAM-CHILDREN;   A   REVERIE. 

I  did  not  cry  or  take  it  to  heart  as  some  do,  and  as 
I  think  he  would  have  done  if  I  had  died,  yet  I  missed 
him  all  day  long,  and  knew  not  till  then  how  much  I 
had  loved  him.  I  missed  his  kindness,  and  I  missed  his 
crossness,  and  wished  him  to  be  alive  again,  to  be 
quarrelling  with  him  (for  we  quarreled  sometimes), 
rather  than  not  have  him  again,  and  was  as  uneasy 
without  him,  as  he  their  poor  uncle  must  have  been 
when  the  doctor  took  off  his  Hmb.  Here  the  children 
fell  a  crying,  and  asked  if  their  little  mourning  which 
they  had  on  was  not  for  uncle  John,  and  they  looked 
up,  and  prayed  me  not  to  go  on  about  their  uncle, 
but  to  tell  them  some  stories  about  their  pretty  ,  dead 
mother.  Then  I  told  how  for  seven  long  years,  in 
hope  sometimes,  sometimes  in  despair,  yet  persisting 
ever,  I  courted  the  fair  Alice  W — n ;  and,  as  much 
as  children  could  understand,  I  explained  to  them 
what  coyness,  and  difficulty,  and  denial  meant  in 
maidens  —  when  suddenly,  turning  to  Alice,  the  soul 
of  the  first  Alice  looked  out  at  her  eyes  with  such  a 
reality  of  re-presentment,  that  I  became  in  doubt  which 
of  them  stood  there  before  me,  or  whose  that  bright 
hair  was ;  and  while  I  stood  gazing,  both  the  children 
gradually  grew  fainter  to  my  view,  receding,  and  still 
receding  till  nothing  at  last  but  two  mournful  features 
were  seen  in  the  uttermost  distance,  which,  without 
speech,  strangely  impressed  upon  me  the  effects  of 
speech ;  "  We  are  not  of  Alice,  nor  of  thee,  nor  are 


DREAM-CHILDREN;  A   REVERIE.  213 

we  children  at  all.  The  children  of  Alice  call  Bar- 
trum  father.  We  are  nothing;  less  than  nothing, 
and  dreams.  We  are  only  what  might  have  been,  and 
must  wait  upon  the  tedious  shores  of  Lethe  millions 

of  ages  before  we  have  existence,  and  a  name  " 

and  immediately  awaking,  I  found  myself  quietly 
seated  in  my  bachelor  arm-chair,  where  I  had  fallen 
asleep,  with  the  faithful  Bridget  unchanged  by  my 
side  —  but  John  L.  (or  James  Elia)  was  gone  for 
ever 


DISTANT   CORRESPONDENTS. 

In  a  Letter  to  B.  F.  Esq.  at  Sydney^  New  South 
Wales. 


My  dear  F.  —  When  I  think  how  welcome  the  sight 
of  a  letter  from  the  world  where  you  were  born  must 
be  to  you  in  that  strange  one  to  which  you  have  been 
transplanted,  I  feel  some  compunctious  visitings  at  my 
long  silence.  But,  indeed,  it  is  no  easy  effort  to  set 
about  a  correspondence  at  our  distance.  The  weary 
world  of  waters  between  us  oppresses  the  imagination. 
It  is  difficult  to  conceive  how  a  scrawl  of  mine  should 
ever  stretch  across  it.  It  is  a  sort  of  presumption  to 
expect  that  one's  thoughts  should  live  so  far.  It  is 
like  writing  for  posterity ;  and  reminds  me  of  one  of 
Mrs.  Rowe's  superscriptions,  "  Alcander  to  Strephon, 
in  the  shades."  Cowley's  Post- Angel  is  no  more  than 
would  be  expedient  in  such  an  intercourse.  One 
drops  a  packet  at  Lombard-street,  and  in  twenty-four 
hours  a  friend  in  Cumberland  gets  it  as  fresh  as  if  it 
came  in  ice.  It  is  only  like  whispering  through  a 
long  trumpet.     But  suppose  a  tube  let  down  from  the 


DISTANT  CORRESPONDENTS.  215 

moon,  with  yourself  at  one  end,  and  the  man  at  the 
other ;  it  would  be  some  balk  to  the  spirit  of  conver- 
sation, if  you  knew  that  the  dialogue  exchanged  with 
that  interesting  theosophist  would  take  two  or  three 
revolutions  of  a  higher  luminary  in  its  passage.  Yet 
for  aught  I  know,  you  may  be  some  parasangs  nigher 
that  primitive  idea  —  Plato's  man  —  than  we  in  Eng- 
land here  have  the  honour  to  reckon  ourselves. 

Epistolary  matter  usually  compriseth  three  topics ; 
news,  sentiment,  and  puns.     In  the  latter,  I  include 
all  non-serious  subjects ;  or  subjects  serious  in  them- 
selves, but    treated   after  my   fashion,  non- seriously. 
—  And  first,  for  news.     In  them  the  most  desirable 
circumstance,  I  suppose,  is  that  they  shall  be  true. 
But  what  security  can  I  have  that  what  I  now  send 
you  for  tnith  shall  not  before  you  get  it  unaccount- 
ably turn  into  a  lie?     For  instance,  our  mutual  friend 
P.  is  at   this  present   writing  —  my  Now  —  in  good 
health,  and  enjoys  a  fair  share  of  wordly  reputation. 
You  are  glad  to  hear  it.     This  is  natural  and  friendly. 
But  at  this  present  reading  — your  Now  —  he  may 
possibly  be    in  the   Bench,  or  going  to  be   hanged, 
which  in  reason  ought   to  abate  something  of  your 
transport   (/.  e.  at   hearing   he   was  well,  &c.),  or  at 
least  considerably  to  modify  it.     I  am  going  to  the 
play   this  evening,  to    have  a   laugh   with    Munden. 
You  have  no  theatre,  I  think  you  told  me,  in  your 
land  of  d d  realities.     You  naturally  lick  your  lips. 


2l6  DISTANT  CORRESPONDENTS. 

and  envy  me  my  felicity.  Think  but  a  moment,  and 
you  will  correct  the  hateful  emotion.  Why,  it  is 
Sunday  morning  with  you,  and  1823.  This  confusion 
of  tenses,  this  grand  solecism  of  two  presents^  is  in  a 
degree  common  to  all  postage.  But  if  I  sent  you 
word  to  Bath  or  the  Devises,  that  I  was  expecting  the 
aforesaid  treat  this  evening,  though  at  the  moment 
you  received  the  intelligence  my  full  feast  of  fun 
would  be  over,  yet  there  would  be  for  a  day  or  two 
after,  as  you  would  well  know,  a  smack,  a  relish  left 
upon  my  mental  palate,  which  would  give  rational 
encouragement  for  you  to  foster  a  portion  at  least  of 
the  disagreeable  passion,  which  it  was  in  part  my  in- 
tention to  produce.  But  ten  months  hence  your  envy 
or  your  sympathy  would  be  as  useless  as  a  passion 
spent  upon  the  dead.  Not  only  does  truth,  in  these 
long  intervals,  un-essence  herself,  but  (what  is  harder) 
one  cannot  venture  a  crude  fiction  for  the  fear  that  it 
may  ripen  into  a  truth  upon  the  voyage.  What  a  wild 
improbable  banter  I  put  upon  you  some  three  years 
since of  Will  Weatherall  having  married  a  ser- 
vant-maid !  I  remember  gravely  consulting  you  how 
we  were  to  receive  her  —  for  Will's  wife  was  in  no 
case  to  be  rejected ;  and  your  no  less  serious  replica- 
tion in  the  matter;  how  tenderly  you  advised  an 
abstemious  introduction  of  literary  topics  before  the 
lady,  with  a  caution  not  to  be  too  forward  in  bringing 
on  the  carpet  matters  more  within  the  sphere  of  her 


DISTANT  CORRESPONDENTS.  21/ 

intelligence ;  your  deliberate  judgment,  or  rather  wise 
suspension  of  sentence,  how  far  jacks,  and  spits,  and 
mops,  could  with  propriety  be  introduced  as  subjects ; 
whether  the  conscious  avoiding  of  all  such  matters  in 
discourse  would  not  have  a  worse  look  than  the  taking 
of  them  casually  in  our  way;  in  what  manner  we 
should  carry  ourselves  to  our  maid  Becky,  Mrs.  Wilham 
Weatherall  being  by ;  whether  we  should  show  more 
delicacy,  and  a  truer  sense  of  respect  for  Will's  wife, 
by  treating  Becky  with  our  customary  chiding  before 
her,  or  by  an  unusual  deferential  civility  paid  to  Becky 
as  to  a  person  of  great  worth,  but  thrown  by  the 
caprice  of  fate  into  a  humble  station.  There  were 
difficulties,  I  remember,  on  both  sides,  which  you  did 
me  the  favour  to  state  with  the  precision  of  a  lawyer, 
united  to  the  tenderness  of  a  friend.  I  laughed  in 
my  sleeve  at  your  solemn  pleadings,  when  lo  !  while  I 
was  valuing  myself  upon  this  flam  put  upon  you  in 
New  South  Wales,  the  devil  in  England,  jealous  pos- 
sibly of  any  lie-children  not  his  own,  or  working  after 
my  copy,  has  actually  instigated  our  friend  (not  three 
days  since)  to  the  commission  of  a  matrimony,  which 
I  had  only  conjured  up  for  your  diversion.  WiUiam 
Weatherall  has  married  Mrs.  Cotterel's  maid.  But  to 
take  it  in  its  truest  sense,  you  will  see,  my  dear  F., 
that  news  from  me  must  become  history  to  you ;  which 
I  neither  profess  to  write,  nor  indeed  care  much  for 
reading.     No  person,  under  a  diviner,  can  with  any 


2l8  DISTANT  CORRESPONDENTS. 

prospect  of  veracity  conduct  a  correspondence  at  such 
an  arm's  length.  Two  prophets,  indeed,  might  thus 
interchange  intelligence  with  effect ;  the  epoch  of  the 
writer  (Habbakuk)  falling  in  with  the  true  present 
time  of  the  receiver  (Daniel)  ;  but  then  we  are  no 
prophets. 

Then  as  to  sentiment.  It  fares  little  better  with 
that.  This  kind  of  dish,  above  all,  requires  to  be 
served  up  hot ;  or  sent  off  in  water-plates,  that  your 
friend  may  have  it  almost  as  warm  as  yourself.  If  it 
have  time  to  cool,  it  is  the  most  tasteless  of  all  cold 
meats.  I  have  often  smiled  at  a  conceit  of  the  late 
Lord  C.  It  seems  that  travelling  somewhere  about 
Geneva,  he  came  to  some  pretty  green  spot,  or  nook, 
where  a  willow,  or  something,  hung  so  fantastically 
and  invitingly  over  a  stream  —  was  it  ?  —  or  a  rock  ? 
—  no  matter  —  but  the  stillness  and  the  repose,  after 
a  weary  journey  'tis  likely,  in  a  languid  moment  of  his 
lordship's  hot  restless  life,  so  took  his  fancy,  that  he 
could  imagine  no  place  so  proper,  in  the  event  of  his 
death,  to  lay  his  bones  in.  This  was  all  very  natural 
and  excusable  as  a  sentiment,  and  shows  his  character 
in  a  very  pleasing  light.  But  when  from  a  passing 
sentiment  it  came  to  be  an  act ;  and  when,  by  a  pos- 
itive testamentary  disposal,  his  remains  were  actually 
carried  all  that  way  from  England;  who  was  there, 
some  desperate  sentimentalists  excepted,  that  did  not 
ask  the  question,  Why  could  not  his  lordship  have 


DISTANT  CORRESPONDENTS.  219 

found  a  spot  as  solitary,  a  nook  as  romantic,  a  tree  as 
green  and  pendent,  with  a  stream  as  emblematic  to 
his  purpose,  in  Surrey,  in  Dorset,  or  in  Devon  ?  Con- 
ceive the  sentiment  boarded  up,  freighted,  entered  at 
the  Custom  House  (startling  the  tide-waiters  with  the 
novelty),  hoisted  into  a  ship.  Conceive  it  pawed 
about  and  handled  between  the  rude  jests  of  tarpaulin 
ruffians  —  a  thing  of  its  delicate  texture  —  the  salt 
bilge  wetting  it  till  it  became  as  vapid  as  a  damaged 
lustring.  Suppose  it  in  material  danger  (mariners 
have  some  superstition  about  sentiments)  of  being 
tossed  over  in  a  fresh  gale  to  some  propitiatory  shark 
(spirit  of  Saint  Gothard,  save  us  from  a  quietus  so 
foreign  to  the  deviser's  purpose  !)  but  it  has  happily 
evaded  a  fishy  consummation.  Trace  it  then  to  its 
lucky  landing  —  at  Lyons  shall  we  say  ?  —  I  have  not 
the  map  before  me  — jostled  upon  four  men's  shoulders 
—  baiting  at  this  town  —  stopping  to  refresh  at  t'other 
village  —  waiting  a  passport  here,  a  license  there ; 
the  sanction  of  the  magistracy  in  this  district,  the 
concurrence  of  the  ecclesiastics  in  that  canton  ;  till  at 
length  it  arrives  at  its  destination,  tired  out  and  jaded, 
from  a  brisk  sentiment,  into  a  feature  of  silly  pride  or 
tawdry  senseless  affectation.  How  few  sentiments, 
my  dear  F.,  I  am  afraid  we  can  set  down,  in  the 
sailor's  phrase,  as  quite  sea-worthy. 

Lastly,  as  to  the  agreeable  levities,  which,  though 
contemptible  in  bulk,  are    the  twinkling  corpuscula 


220  DISTANT  CORRESPONDENTS. 

which  should  irradiate  a  right  friendly  epistle  —  your 
puns  and  small  jests  are,  I  apprehend,  extremely  cir- 
cumscribed in  their  sphere  of  action.  They  are  so 
far  from  a  capacity  of  being  packed  up  and  sent  be- 
yond sea,  they  will  scarce  endure  to  be  transported  by 
hand  from  this  room  to  the  next.  Their  vigour  is  as 
the  instant  of  their  birth.  Their  nutriment  for  their 
brief  existence  is  the  intellectual  atmosphere  of  the 
by-standers  :  or  this  last,  is  the  fine  slime  of  Nilus  — 
the  melior  lutus,  —  whose  maternal  recipiency  is  as 
necessary  as  the  sol  pater  to  their  equivocal  generation. 
A  pun  hath  a  hearty  kind  of  present  ear-kissing  smack 
with  it ;  you  can  no  more  transmit  it  in  its  pristine 
flavour,  than  you  can  send  a  kiss.  —  Have  you  not 
tried  in  some  instances  to  palm  off  a  yesterday's  pun 
upon  a  gentleman,  and  has  it  answered  ?  Not  but  it 
was  new  to  his  hearing,  but  it  did  not  seem  to  come 
new  from  you.  It  did  not  hitch  in.  It  was  Hke  pick- 
ing up  at  a  village  ale-house  a  two  days  old  newspaper. 
You  have  not  seen  it  before,  but  you  resent  the  stale 
thing  as  an  affront.  This  sort  of  merchandise  above 
all  requires  a  quick  return.  A  pun,  and  its  recognitory 
laugh,  must  be  co- instantaneous.  The  one  is  the 
brisk  lightning,  the  other  the  fierce  thunder.  A 
moment's  interval,  and  the  link  is  snapped.  A  pun  is 
reflected  from  a  friend's  face  as  from  a  mirror.  Who 
would  consult  his  sweet  visnomy,  if  the  polished  sur- 
face were  two  or  three  minutes  (not  to  speak  of 
twelve-months,  my  dear  F.)  in  giving  back  its  copy? 


DISTANT  CORRESPONDENTS.  221 

I  cannot  image  to  myself  whereabout  you  are. 
When  I  try  to  fix  it,  Peter  Wilkins's  island  comes 
across  me.  Sometimes  you  seem  to  be  in  the  Hades 
of  Thieves.  I  see  Diogenes  prying  among  you  with 
his  perpetual  fruitless  lantern.  What  must  you  be 
willing  by  this  time  to  give  for  the  sight  of  an  honest 
man  !  You  must  almost  have  forgotten  how  we  look. 
And  tell  me,  what  your  Sydneyites  do?  are  they 
th**v*ngall  day  long?  Merciful  heaven  !  what  prop- 
erty can  stand  against  such  a  depredation !  The 
kangaroos  —  your  Aborigines  —  do  they  keep  their 
primitive  simplicity  un-Europe-tainted,  with  those 
little  short  fore-puds,  looking  like  a  lesson  framed  by 
nature  to  the  pickpocket !  Marry,  for  diving  into 
fobs  they  are  rather  lamely  provided  a  priori ;  but  if 
the  hue  and  cry  were  once  up,  they  would  show  as 
fair  a  pair  of  hind-shifters  as  the  expertest  loco-motor 
in  the  colony.  —  We  hear  the  most  improbable  tales 
at  this  distance.  Pray,  is  it  true  that  the  young  Spar- 
tans among  you  are  born  with  six  fingers,  which  spoils 
their  scanning? — It  must  look  very  odd;  but  use 
reconciles.  For  their  scansion,  it  is  less  to  be  re- 
gretted, for  if  they  take  it  into  their  heads  to  be  poets, 
it  is  odds  but  they  turn  out,  the  greater  part  of  them, 
vile  plagiarists.  —  Is  there  much  difference  to  see  to 
between  the  son  of  a  th**f,  and  the  grandson?  or 
where  does  the  taint  stop  ?  Do  you  bleach  in  three 
or  in  four  generations  ?  —  I  have  many  questions  to 


222  DISTANT   CORRESPONDENTS. 

put,  but  ten  Delphic  voyages  can  be  made  in  a  shorter 
time  than  it  will  take  to  satisfy  my  scruples.  —  Do 
you  grow  your  own  hemp  ?  —  What  is  your  staple 
trade,  exclusive  of  the  national  profession,  I  mean? 
Your  lock- smiths,  I  take  it,  are  some  of  your  great 
capitalists. 

I  am  insensibly  chatting  to  you  as  familiarly  as 
when  we  used  to  exchange  good-morrows  out  of  our 
old  contiguous  windows,  in  pump-famed  Harecourt 
in  the  Temple.  Why  did  you  ever  leave  that  quiet 
corner  ?  —  Why  did  I  ?  —  with  its  complement  of  four 
poor  elms,  from  whose  smoke-dyed  barks,  the  theme 
of  jesting  ruralists,  I  picked  my  first  lady-birds  !  My 
heart  is  as  dry  as  that  spring  sometimes  proves  in  a 
thirsty  August,  when  I  revert  to  the  space  that  is 
between  us;  a  length  of  passage  enough  to  render 
obsolete  the  phrases  of  our  English  letters  before  they 
can  reach  you.  But  while  I  talk,  I  think  you  hear 
me,  —  thoughts  dallying  with  vain  surmise  — 

Aye  me !  while  thee  the  seas  and  sounding  shores 
Hold  far  away. 

Come  back,  before  I  am  grown  into  a  very  old 
man,  so  as  you  shall  hardly  know  me.  Come  before 
Bridget  walks  on  crutches.  Girls  whom  you  left 
children  have  become  sage  matrons,  while  you  are 
tarrying  there.  The  blooming  Miss  W — r  (you  re- 
member Sally  W — r)  called  upon  us  yesterday,  an 
aged  crone.     Folks,  whom  you  knew,  die  off  every 


DISTANT  CORRESPONDENTS.  223 

year.  Formerly,  I  thought  that  death  was  wearing 
out,  —  I  stood  ramparted  about  with  so  many  healthy 
friends.  The  departure  of  J.  W.,  two  springs  back 
corrected  my  delusion.  Since  then  the  old  divorcer 
has  been  busy.  If  you  do  not  make  haste  to  return, 
there  will  be  little  left  to  greet  you,  of  me,  or  mine. 


THE  PRAISE   OF   CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS. 


I  LIKE  to  meet  a  sweep  —  understand  me  —  not  a 
grown  sweeper  —  old  chimney-sweepers  are  by  no 
means  attractive  —  but  one  of  those  tender  novices, 
blooming  through  their  first  nigritude,  the  maternal 
washings  not  quite  effaced  from  the  cheek  —  such  as 
come  forth  with  the  dawn,  or  somewhat  earlier,  with 
their  little  professional  notes  sounding  like  the  peep 
peep  of  a  young  sparrow ;  or  liker  to  the  matin  lark 
should  I  pronounce  them,  in  their  aerial  ascents  not 
seldom  anticipating  the  sun- rise? 

I  have  a  kindly  yearning  toward  these  dim  specks 

—  poor  blots  —  innocent  blacknesses  — 

I  reverence  these  young  Africans  of  our  own  growth 

—  these  almost  clergy  imps,  who  sport  their  cloth 
without  assumption ;  and  from  their  little  pulpits  (the 
tops  of  chimneys),  in  the  nipping  air  of  a  December 
morning,  preach  a  lesson  of  patience  to  mankind. 

When  a  child,  what  a  mysterious  pleasure  it  was  to 
witness  their  operation  !  to  see  a  chit  no  bigger  than 
one's-self  enter,  one  knew  not  by  what  process,  into 


THE   PRAISE   OF  CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS.    225 

what  seemed  the  fauces  Averni — to  pursue  him  in 
imagination,  as  he  went  sounding  on  through  so  many 
dark  stifling  caverns,  horrid  shades  !  —  to  shudder 
with  the  idea  that  '^  now,  surely,  he  must  be  lost  for 
ever  !  "  —  to  revive  at  hearing  his  feeble  shout  of 
discovered  day-light  —  and  then  (O  fulness  of  delight) 
running  out  of  doors,  to  come  just  in  time  to  see  the 
sable  phenomenon  emerge  in  safety,  the  brandished 
weapon  of  his  art  victorious  like  some  flag  waved 
over  a  conquered  citadel !  I  seem  to  remember  hav- 
ing been  told,  that  a  bad  sweep  was  once  left  in  a 
stack  with  his  brush,  to  indicate  which  way  the  wind 
blew.  It  was  an  awful  spectacle  certainly ;  not  much 
unlike  the  old  stage  direction  in  Macbeth,  where  the 
"Apparition  of  a  child  crowned  with  a  tree  in  his 
hand  rises." 

Reader,  if  thou  meetest  one  of  these  small  gentry 
in  thy  early  rambles,  it  is  good  to  give  him  a  penny. 
It  is  better  to  give  him  two-pence.  If  it  be  starving 
weather,  and  to  the  proper  troubles  of  his  hard  occu- 
pation, a  pair  of  kibed  heels  (no  unusual  accompani- 
ment) be  superadded,  the  demand  on  thy  humanity 
will  surely  rise  to  a  tester. 

There  is  a  composition,  the  ground-work  of  which 
I  have  understood  to  be  the  sweet  wood  'yclept  sas- 
safras. This  wood  boiled  down  to  a  kind  of  tea,  and 
tempered  with  an  infusion  of  milk  and  sugar,  hath  to 
some  tastes  a  delicacy  beyond  the  China  luxury.  I 
IS 


Il6   THE  PRAISE  OF  CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS. 

know  not  how  thy  palate  may  reHsh  it;  for  myself, 
with  every  deference  to  the  judicious  Mr.  Read,  who 
hath  time  out  of  mind  kept  open  a  shop  (the  only 
one  he  avers  in  London)  for  the  vending  of  this 
*'  wholesome  and  pleasant  beverage,"  on  the  south  side 
of  Fleet-street,  as  thou  approachest  Bridge-street  —  the 
only  Salopian  house,  —  I  have  never  yet  adventured  to 
dip  my  own  particular  lip  in  a  basin  of  his  commended 
ingredients  —  a  cautious  premonition  to  the  olfac- 
tories constantly  whispering  to  me,  that  my  stomach 
must  infallibly,  with  all  due  courtesy,  decline  it.  Yet 
I  have  seen  palates,  otherwise  not  uninstructed  in 
dietetical  elegances,  sup  it  up  with  avidity. 

I  know  not  by  what  particular  conformation  of  the 
organ  it  happens,  but  I  have  always  found  that  this 
composition  is  surprisingly  gratifying  to  the  palate  of 
a  young  chimney-sweeper  —  whether  the  oily  particles 
(sassafras  is  slightly  oleaginous)  do  attenuate  and 
soften  the  fuliginous  concretions,  which  are  sometimes 
found  (in  dissections)  to  adhere  to  the  roof  of  the 
mouth  in  these  unfledged  practitioners;  or  whether 
Nature,  sensible  that  she  had  mingled  too  much  of 
bitter  wood  in  the  lot  of  these  raw  victims,  caused  to 
grow  out  of  the  earth  her  sassafras  for  a  sweet  lenitive 
—  but  so  it  is,  that  no  possible  taste  or  odour  to  the 
senses  of  a  young  chimney-sweeper  can  convey  a 
delicate  excitement  comparable  to  this  mixture.  Be- 
ing penniless,  they  will  yet  hang  their  black  heads 


THE  PRAISE  OF  CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS.    227 

over  the  ascending  steam,  to  gratify  one  sense  if  pos- 
sible, seemingly  no  less  pleased  than  those  domestic 
animals  —  cats  —  when  they  purr  over  a  new-found 
sprig  of  valerian.  There  is  something  more  in  these 
sympathies  than  philosophy  can  inculcate. 

Now  albeit  Mr.  Read  boasteth,  not  without  reason, 
that  his  is  the  only  Salopian  house  ;  yet  be  it  known 
to  thee,  reader  —  if  thou  art  one  who  keepest  what 
are  called  good  hours,  thou  art  haply  ignorant  of  the 
fact  —  he  hath  a  race  of  industrious  imitators,  who 
from  stalls,  and  under  open  sky,  dispense  the  same 
savoury  mess  to  humbler  customers,  at  that  dead  time 
of  the  dawn,  when  (as  extremes  meet)  the  rake, 
reeling  home  from  his  midnight  cups,  and  the  hard- 
handed  artisan  leaving  his  bed  to  resume  the  prema- 
ture labours  of  the  day,  jostle,  not  unfrequently  to 
the  manifest  disconcerting  of  the  former,  for  the 
honours  of  the  pavement.  It  is  the  time  when,  in 
summer,  between  the  expired  and  the  not  yet  relu- 
mined  kitchen- fires,  the  kennels  of  our  fair  metropolis 
give  forth  their  least  satisfactory  odours.  The  rake, 
who  wisheth  to  dissipate  his  o'er-night  vapours  in 
more  grateful  coffee,  curses  the  ungenial  fume,  as  he 
passe th ;  but  the  artisan  stops  to  taste,  and  blesses  the 
fragrant  breakfast. 

This  is  Saloop  —  the  precocious  herb- woman's  dar- 
ling —  the  delight  of  the  early  gardener,  who  transports 
his  smoking  cabbages  by  break  of  day  from  Hammer- 


228    THE   PRAISE  OF  CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS. 

smith  to  Covent-garden's  famed  piazzas  —  the  delight, 
and,  oh  I  fear,  too  often  the  envy,  of  the  unpennied 
sweep.  Him  shouldest  thou  haply  encounter,  with 
his  dim  visage  pendent  over  the  grateful  steam, 
regale  him  with  a  sumptuous  basin  (it  will  cost  thee 
but  three  half- pennies)  and  a  slice  of  delicate  bread 
and  butter  (an  added  halfpenny)  —  so  may  thy  culi- 
nary fires,  eased  of  the  o'er-charged  secretions  from 
thy  worse-placed  hospitalities,  curl  up  a  lighter  volume 
to  the  welkin  —  so  may  the  descending  soot  never 
taint  thy  costly  well-ingredienced  soups  —  nor  the 
odious  cry,  quick- reaching  from  street  to  street,  of 
\h^  fired  chimney,  invite  the  rattling  engines  from  ten 
adjacent  parishes,  to  disturb  for  a  casual  scintillation 
thy  peace  and  pocket ! 

I  am  by  nature  extremely  susceptible  of  street 
aifronts ;  the  jeers  and  taunts  of  the  populace ;  the 
low-bred  triumph  they  display  over  the  casual  trip,  or 
splashed  stocking,  of  a  gentleman.  Yet  can  I  endure 
the  jocularity  of  a  young  sweep  with  something  more 
than  forgiveness.  —  In  the  last  winter  but  one,  pacing 
along  Cheapside  with  my  accustomed  precipitation 
when  I  walk  westward,  a  treacherous  slide  brought 
me  upon  my  back  in  an  instant.  I  scrambled  up  with 
pain  and  shame  enough  —  yet  outwardly  trying  to  face 
it  down,  as  if  nothing  had  happened  —  when  the 
roguish  grin  of  one  of  these  young  wits  encountered 
me.     There  he  stood,  pointing  me  out  with  his  dusky 


THE   PRAISE   OF  CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS.    229 

finger  to  the  mob,  and  to  a  poor  woman  (I  suppose 
his  mother)  in  particular,  till  the  tears  for  the  exquis- 
iteness  of  the  fun  (so  he  thought  it)  worked  them- 
selves out  at  the  corners  of  his  poor  red  eyes,  red 
from  many  a  previous  weeping,  and  soot-inflamed,  yet 
twinkling  through  all  with  such  a  joy,  snatched  out  of 

desolation,  that  Hogarth but  Hogarth  has  got 

him  already  (how  could  he  miss  him  ?)  in  the  March 

to  Finchley,  grinning  at  the  pye-man there  he 

stood,  as  he  stands  in  the  picture,  irremovable,  as  if 
the  jest  was  to  last  for  ever  —  with  such  a  maximum 
of  glee,  and  minimum  of  mischief,  in  his  mirth — for 
the  grin  of  a  genuine  sweep  hath  absolutely  no  malice 
in  it  —  that  I  could  have  been  content,  if  the  honour 
of  a  gentleman  might  endure  it,  to  have  remained  his 
butt  and  his  mockery  till  midnight. 

I  am  by  theory  obdurate  to  the  seductiveness  of 
what  are  called  a  fine  set  of  teeth.  Every  pair  of 
rosy  lips  (the  ladies  must  pardon  me)  is  a  casket,  pre- 
sumably holding  such  jewels ;  but,  methinks,  they 
should  take  leave  to  "  air  "  them  as  frugally  as  pos- 
sible. The  fine  lady,  or  fine  gentleman,  who  show 
me  their  teeth,  show  me  bones.  Yet  must  I  con- 
fess, that  from  the  mouth  of  a  true  sweep  a  display 
(even  to  ostentation)  of  those  white  and  shinning 
ossifications,  strikes  me  as  an  agreeable  anomaly  in 
manners,  and  an  allowable  piece  of  foppery.  It  is, 
as  when 


230   THE  PRAISE  OF  CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS. 

A  sable  cloud 
Turns  forth  her  silver  lining  on  the  night. 

It  is  like  some  remnant  of  gentry  not  quite  extinct ;  a 
badge  of  better  days ;  a  hint  of  nobility :  —  and, 
doubtless,  under  the  obscuring  darkness  and  double 
night  of  their  forlorn  disguisement,  oftentimes  lurketh 
good  blood,  and  gentle  conditions,  derived  from  lost 
ancestry,  and  a  lapsed  pedigree.  The  premature  ap- 
prenticements  of  these  tender  victims  give  but  too 
much  encouragement,  I  fear,  to  clandestine,  and  al- 
most infantile  abductions ;  the  seeds  of  civility  and 
true  courtesy,  so  often  discernible  in  these  young 
grafts  (not  otherwise  to  be  accounted  for)  plainly  hint 
at  some  forced  adoptions ;  many  noble  Rachels  mourn- 
ing for  their  children,  even  in  our  days,  countenance 
the  fact;  the  tales  of  fairy- spiriting  may  shadow  a 
lamentable  verity,  and  the  recovery  of  the  young 
Montagu  be  but  a  solitary  instance  of  good  fortune, 
out  of  many  irreparable  and  hopeless  defiliations. 

In  one  of  the  state-beds  at  Arundel  Castle,  a  few 
years  since  —  under  a  ducal  canopy  —  (that  seat  of 
the  Howards  is  an  object  of  curiosity  to  visitors, 
chiefly  for  its  beds,  in  which  the  late  duke  was  espe- 
cially a  connoisseur)  —  encircled  with  curtains  of  de- 
licatest  crimson,  with  starry  coronets  inwoven  —  folded 
between  a  pair  of  sheets  whiter  and  softer  than  the 
lap  where  Venus  lulled  Ascanius  —  was  discovered  by 
chance,  after  all  methods  of  search  had  failed,  at  noon- 


THE   PRAISE   OF  CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS.    23 1 

day,  fast  asleep,  a  lost  chimney-sweeper.  The  little 
creature,  having  somehow  confounded  his  passage 
among  the  intricacies  of  those  lordly  chimneys,  by 
some  unknown  aperture  had  alighted  upon  this  mag- 
nificent chamber  :  and,  tired  with  his  tedious  explora- 
tions, was  unable  to  resist  the  delicious  invitement  to 
repose,  which  he  there  saw  exhibited;  so,  creeping 
between  the  sheets  very  quietly,  laid  his  black  head 
upon  the  pillow,  and  slept  like  a  young  Howard. 

Such  is  the  account  given  to  the  visitors  at  the 
Castle.  —  But  I  cannot  help  seeming  to  perceive  a 
confirmation  of  what  I  have  just  hinted  at  in  this 
story.  A  high  instinct  was  at  work  in  the  case,  or 
I  am  mistaken.  Is  it  probable  that  a  poor  child  of 
that  description,  with  whatever  weariness  he  might 
be  visited,  would  have  ventured,  under  such  a  pen- 
alty, as  he  would  be  taught  to  expect,  to  uncover 
the  sheets  of  a  Duke's  bed,  and  deliberately  to  lay 
himself  down  between  them,  when  the  rug,  or  the 
carpet,  presented  an  obvious  couch,  still  far  above 
his  pretensions  —  is  this  probable,  I  would  ask,  if 
the  great  power  of  nature,  which  I  contend  for,  had 
not  been  manifested  within  him,  prompting  to  the 
adventure?  Doubtless  this  young  nobleman  (for 
such  my  mind  misgives  me  that  he  must  be)  was 
allured  by  some  memory,  not  amounting  to  full  con- 
sciousness, of  his  condition  in  infancy,  when  he  was 
used  to  be  lapt  by  his  mother,  or  his  nurse,  in  just 


232    THE   PRAISE   OF   CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS. 

such  sheets  as  he  there  found,  into  which  he  was 
now  but  creeping  back  as  into  his  proper  incunabula^ 
and  resting-place.  —  By  no  other  theory,  than  by  this 
sentiment  of  a  pre-existent  state  (as  I  may  call  it), 
can  I  explain  a  deed  so  venturous,  and,  indeed, 
upon  any  other  system,  so  indecorous,  in  this  tender, 
but  unseasonable,  sleeper. 

My  pleasant  friend  Jem  White  was  so  impressed 
with  a  belief  of  metamorphoses  like  this  frequently 
taking  place,  that  in  some  sort  to  reverse  the  wrongs 
of  fortune  in  these  poor  changelings,  he  instituted 
an  annual  feast  of  chimney-sweepers,  at  which  it 
was  his  pleasure  to  officiate  as  host  and  waiter.  It 
was  a  solemn  supper  held  in  Smithfield,  upon  the 
yearly  return  of  the  fair  of  St.  Bartholomew.  Cards 
were  issued  a  week  before  to  the  master-sweeps  in 
and  about  the  metropolis,  confining  the  invitation  to 
their  younger  fry.  Now  and  then  an  elderly  strip- 
ling would  get  in  among  us,  and  be  good-naturedly 
winked  at;  but  our  main  body  were  infantry.  One 
unfortunate  wight,  indeed,  who,  relying  upon  his 
dusky  suit,  had  intruded  himself  into  our  party,  but 
by  tokens  was  providentially  discovered  in  time  to 
be  no  chimney-sweeper  (all  is  not  soot  which  looks 
so),  was  quoited  out  of  the  presence  with  universa 
indignation,  as  not  having  on  the  wedding  garment ; 
but  in  general  the  greatest  harmony  prevailed.  The 
place  chosen  was  a  convenient  spot  among  the  pens, 


THE   PRAISE   OF   CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS.    233 

at  the^  north  side  of  the  fair,  not  so  far  distant  as  to 
be  impervious  to  the  agreeable  hubbub  of  that 
vanity ;  but  remote  enough  not  to  be  obvious  to  the 
interruption  of  every  gaping  spectator  in  it.  The 
guests  assembled  about  seven.  In  those  little  tem- 
porary parlours  three  tables  were  spread  with  napery, 
not  so  fine  as  substantial,  and  at  every  board  a 
comely  hostess  presided  with  her  pan  of  hissing  sau- 
sages. The  nostrils  of  the  young  rogues  dilated  at 
the  savour.  James  White,  as  head  waiter,  had  charge 
of  the  first  table ;  and  myself,  with  our  trusty  com- 
panion BiGOD,  ordinarily  ministered  to  the  other  two. 
There  was  clambering  and  jostling,  you  may  be  sure, 
who  should  get  at  the  first  table  —  for  Rochester  in 
his  maddest  days  could  not  have  done  the  humours 
of  the  scene  with  more  spirit  than  my  friend.  After 
some  general  expression  of  thanks  for  the  honour  the 
company  had  done  him,  his  inaugural  ceremony  was 
to  clasp  the  greasy  waist  of  old  dame  Ursula  (the 
fattest  of  the  three),  that  stood  frying  and  fretting, 
half-blessing,  half-cursing  "  the  gentleman,"  and  im- 
print upon  her  chaste  lips  a  tender  salute,  whereat 
the  universal  host  would  set  up  a  shout  that  tore  the 
concave,  while  hundreds  of  grinning  teeth  startled 
the  night  with  their  brightness.  O  it  was  a  pleasure 
to  see  the  sable  younkers  lick  in  the  unctuous  meat, 
with  his  more  unctuous  sayings  —  how  he  would  fit 
the  tit  bits  to  the  puny  mouths,  reserving  the  lengthier 


234   THE   PRAISE   OF  CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS. 

links  for  the  seniors  —  how  he  would  intercept  a 
morsel  even  in  the  jaws  of  some  young  desperado, 
declaring  it  "  must  to  the  pan  again  to  be  browned, 
for  it  was  not  fit  for  a  gentleman's  eating "  —  how 
he  would  recommend  this  slice  of  white  bread,  or 
that  piece  of  kissing- crust,  to  a  tender  juvenile,  ad- 
vising them  all  to  have  a  care  of  cracking  their  teeth, 
which  were  their  best  patrimony,  —  how  genteelly  he 
would  deal  about  the  small  ale,  as  if  it  were  wine, 
naming  the  brewer,  and  protesting,  if  it  were  not 
good,  he  should  lose  their  custom ;  with  a  special 
recommendation  to  wipe  the  lip  before  drinking. 
Then  we  had  our  toasts  —  "  the  King,"  —  the  "  Cloth," 
—  which,  whether  they  understood  or  not,  was  equally 
diverting  and  flattering ;  —  and  for  a  crowning  sen- 
timent, which  never  failed,  "  May  the  Brush  super- 
sede the  Laurel."  All  these,  and  fifty  other  fancies, 
which  were  rather  felt  than  comprehended  by  his 
guests,  would  he  utter,  standing  upon  tables,  and 
prefacing  every  sentiment  with  a  "  Gentlemen,  give 
me  leave  to  propose  so  and  so,"  which  was  a  pro- 
digious comfort  to  those  young  orphans ;  every  now 
and  then  stuffing  into  his  mouth  (for  it  did  not  do 
to  be  squeamish  on  these  occasions)  indiscriminate 
pieces  of  those  reeking  sausages,  which  pleased  them 
mightily,  and  was  the  savouriest  part,  you  may  be- 
lieve, of  the  entertainment. 

Golden  lads  and  lasses  must. 

As  chimney-sweepers,  come  to  dust. 


THE   PRAISE   OF   CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS.    235 

James  White  is  extinct,  and  with  him  these  suppers 
have  long  ceased.  He  carried  away  with  him  half 
the  fun  of  the  world  when  he  died  —  of  my  world 
at  least.  His  old  clients  look  for  him  among  the 
pens;  and,  missing  him,  reproach  the  altered  feast 
of  St.  Bartholomew,  and  the  glory  of  Smithfield  de- 
parted for  ever. 


A   COMPLAINT    OF     THE     DECAY    OF 
BEGGARS  IN  THE   METROPOLIS. 


The  all-sweeping  besom  of  societarian  reformation  — 
your  only  modern  Alcides'  club  to  rid  the  time  of  its 
abuses  —  is  uplift  with  many-handed  sway  to  extir- 
pate the  last  fluttering  tatters  of  the  bugbear  Men- 
dicity from  the  metropolis.  Scrips,  wallets,  bags  — 
staves,  dogs,  and  crutches  —  the  whole  mendicant 
fraternity  with  all  their  baggage  are  fast  posting  out 
of  the  purlieus  of  this  eleventh  persecution.  From 
the  crowded  crossing,  from  the  corners  of  streets  and 
turnings  of  allies,  the  parting  Genius  of  Beggary  is 
"with  sighing  sent." 

I  do  not  approve  of  this  wholesale  going  to  work, 
this  impertinent  crusado,  or  beUu77i  ad  extermina- 
tionenij  proclaimed  against  a  species.  Much  good 
might  be  sucked  from  these  Beggars. 

They  were  the  oldest  and  the  honourablest  form 
of  pauperism.  Their  appeals  were  to  our  common 
nature ;  less  revolting  to  an  ingenuous  mind  than  to 
be  a  suppliant  to  the  particular  humours  or  caprice 
of  any  fellow-creature,  or  set  of  fellow-creatures,  pa- 


A   COMPLAINT   OF   THE  DECAY,  ETC.     237 

rochial  or  societarian.  Theirs  were  the  only  rates 
uninvidious  in  the  levy,  ungrudged  in  the  assessment. 

There  was  a  dignity  springing  from  the  very  depth 
of  their  desolation ;  as  to  be  naked  is  to  be  so  much 
nearer  to  the  being  a  man,  than  to  go  in  livery. 

The  greatest  spirits  have  felt  this  in  their  reverses ; 
and  when  Dionysius  from  king  turned  schoolmaster, 
do  we  feel  any  thing  towards  him  but  contempt? 
Could  Vandyke  have  made  a  picture  of  him,  swaying 
a  ferula  for  a  sceptre,  which  would  have  affected  our 
minds  with  the  same  heroic  pity,  the  same  compas- 
sionate admiration,  with  which  we  regard  his  Belisa- 
rius  begging  for  an  obolum  ?  Would  the  moral  have 
been  more  graceful,  more  pathetic? 

The  Blind  Beggar  in  the  legend  —  the  father  of 
pretty  Bessy  —  whose  story  doggrel  rhymes  and  ale- 
house signs  cannot  so  degrade  or  attenuate,  but  that 
some  sparks  of  a  lustrous  spirit  will  shine  through 
the  disguisements  —  this  noble  Earl  of  Cornwall  (as 
indeed  he  was)  and  memorable  sport  of  fortune, 
fleeing  from  the  unjust  sentence  of  his  liege  lord, 
stript  of  all,  and  seated  on  the  flowering  green  of 
Bethnal,  with  his  more  fresh  and  springing  daughter 
by  his  side,  illumining  his  rags  and  his  beggary  — 
would  the  child  and  parent  have  cut  a  better  figure, 
doing  the  honours  of  a  counter,  or  expiating  their 
fallen  condition  upon  the  three- foot  eminence  of 
some  sempstering  shop-board? 


238  A  COMPLAINT  OF  THE  DECAY 

In  tale  or  history  your  Beggar  is  evei  the  just  anti- 
pode  to  your  King.  The  poets  and  romancical 
writers  (as  dear  Margaret  Newcastle  would  call 
them)  when  they  would  most  sharply  and  feelingly 
paint  a  reverse  of  fortune,  never  stop  till  they  have 
brought  down  their  hero  in  good  earnest  to  rags  and 
the  wallet.  The  depth  of  the  descent  illustrates  the 
height  he  falls  from.  There  is  no  medium  which 
can  be  presented  to  the  imagination  without  offence. 
There  is  no  breaking  the  fall.  Lear,  thrown  from 
his  palace,  must  divest  him  of  his  garments,  till  he 
answer  "  mere  nature ;  "  and  Cresseid,  fallen  from 
a  prince's  love,  must  extend  her  pale  arms,  pale 
with  other  whiteness  than  of  beauty,  supplicating 
lazar  arms  with  bell  and  clap-dish. 

The  Lucian  wits  knew  this  very  well ;  and,  with  a 
converse  policy,  when  they  would  express  scorn  of 
greatness  without  the  pity,  they  show  us  an  Alexander 
in  the  shades  cobbling  shoes,  or  a  Semiramis  getting 
up  foul  linen. 

How  would  it  sound  in  song,  that  a  great  monarch 
had  declined  his  affections  upon  the  daughter  of  a 
baker  !  yet  do  we  feel  the  imagination  at  all  violated 
when  we  read  the  "true  ballad,"  where  King  Co- 
phetua  wooes  the  beggar  maid? 

Pauperism,  pauper,  poor  man,  are  expressions  of 
pity,  but  pity  alloyed  with  contempt.  No  one  prop- 
erly contemns  a  beggar.      Poverty  is  a  comparative 


OF  BEGGARS   IN  THE  METROPOLIS.       239 

thing,  and  each  degree  of  it  is  mocked  by  its 
"neighbour  grice."  Its  poor  rents  and  comings-in 
are  soon  summed  up  and  told.  Its  pretences  to 
property  are  ahnost  ludicrous.  Its  pitiful  attempts 
to  save  excite  a  smile.  Every  scornful  companion 
can  weigh  his  trifle-bigger  purse  against  it.  Poor 
man  reproaches  poor  man  in  the  streets  with  im- 
politic mention  of  his  condition,  his  own  being  a 
shade  better,  while  the  rich  pass  by  and  jeer  at  both. 
No  rascally  comparative  insults  a  Beggar,  or  thinks 
of  weighing  purses  with  him.  He  is  not  in  the  scale 
of  comparison.  He  is  not  under  the  measure  of 
property.  He  confessedly  hath  none,  any  more  than 
a  dog  or  a  sheep.  No  one  twitteth  him  with  osten- 
tation above  his  means.  No  one  accuses  him  of 
pride,  or  upbraideth  him  with  mock  humility.  None 
jostle  with  him  for  the  wall,  or  pick  quarrels  for 
precedency.  No  wealthy  neighbour  seeketh  to  eject 
him  from  his  tenement.  No  man  sues  him.  No 
man  goes  to  law  with  him.  If  I  were  not  the  in- 
dependent gentleman  that  I  am,  rather  than  I  would 
be  a  retainer  to  the  great,  a  led  captain,  or  a  poor 
relation,  I  would  choose,  out  of  the  delicacy  and 
true  greatness  of  my  mind,  to  be  a  Beggar. 

Rags,  which  are  the  reproach  of  poverty,  are  the 
Beggar's  robes,  and  graceful  insignia  of  his  profes- 
sion, his  tenure,  his  full  dress,  the  suit  in  which  he  is 
expected  to  show  himself  in    public.     He   is  never 


240  A  COMPLAINT  OF  THE  DECAY 

out  of  the  fashion,  or  limpeth  awkwardly  behind  it. 
He  is  not  required  to  put  on  court  mourning.  He 
weareth  all  colours,  fearing  none.  His  costume  hath 
undergone  less  change  than  the  Quaker's.  He  is  the 
only  man  in  the  universe  who  is  not  obliged  to  study 
appearances.  The  ups  and  downs  of  the  world  con- 
cern him  no  longer.  He  alone  continueth  in  one 
stay.  The  price  of  stock  or  land  affecteth  him  not. 
The  fluctuations  of  agricultural  or  commercial  pros- 
perity touch  him  not,  o*:  at  worst  but  change  his 
customers.  He  is  not  expected  to  become  bail  or 
surety  for  any  one.  No  man  troubleth  him  with 
questioning  his  religion  or  politics.  He  is  the  only 
free  man  in  the  universe. 

The  Mendicants  of  this  great  city  were  so  many  of 
her  sights,  her  lions.  I  can  no  more  spare  them  than 
I  could  the  Cries  of  London.  No  corner  of  a  street 
is  complete  without  them.  They  are  as  indispensable 
as  the  Ballad  Singer ;  and  in  their  picturesque  attire 
as  ornamental  as  the  Signs  of  old  London.  They 
were  the  standing  morals,  emblems,  mementos,  dial- 
mottos,  the  spital  sermons,  the  books  for  children, 
the  salutary  checks  and  pauses  to  the  high  and  rush- 
ing tide  of  greasy  citizenry  — 

Look 

Upon  that  poor  and  broken  bankrupt  there. 

Above  all,  those  old  blind  Tobits  that  used  to  line 
the  wall   of  Lincoln's    Inn  Garden,  before    modem 


OF   BEGGARS  IN   THE   METROPOLIS.       24I 

fastidiousness  had  expelled  them,  casting  up  their 
ruined  orbs  to  catch  a  ray  of  pity,  and  (if  possible) 
of  light,  with  their  faithful  Dog  Guide  at  their  feet,  — 
whither  are  they  fled  ?  or  into  what  corners,  blind  as 
themselves,  have  they  been  driven,  out  of  the  whole- 
some air  and  sun-warmth?  immersed  between  four 
walls,  in  what  withering  poor-house  do  they  endure 
the  penalty  of  double  darkness,  where  the  chink  of 
the  dropt  half-penny  no  more  consoles  their  forlorn 
bereavement,  far  from  the  sound  of  the  cheerful  and 
hope-stirring  tread  of  the  passenger?  Where  hang 
their  useless  staves?  and  who  will  farm  their  dogs? 

—  Have  the  overseers  of  St.  L caused  them  to 

be  shot?  or  were  they  tied  up  in  sacks,  and  dropt 

into   the  Thames,  at  the   suggestion  of  B ,  the 

mild  Rector  of ? 

Well  fare  the  soul  of  unfastidious  Vincent  Bourne, 
most  classical,  and  at  the  same  time,  most  English, 
of  the  Latinists  !  —  who  has  treated  of  this  human 
and  quadrupedal  alliance,  this  dog  and  man  friend- 
ship, in  the  sweetest  of  his  poems,  the  Epitaphium 
in  CanejUy  or  Dog's  Epitaph.  Reader,  peruse  it ; 
and  say,  if  customary  sights,  which  could  call  up 
such  gentle  poetry  as  this,  were  of  a  nature  to  do 
more  harm  or  good  to  the  moral  sense  of  the  pas- 
sengers through  the  daily  thoroughfares  of  a  vast 
and  busy  metropolis. 

16 


242  A  COMPLAINT   OF  THE  DECAY 

Pauperis  hie  Iri  requiesco  Lyciscus,  herilis, 
Dum  vixi,  tutela  vigil  columenque  senectae, 
Dux  caeco  fidus  :  nee,  me  dueente,  solebat, 
Praetenso  hine  atque  hinc  baeulo,  per  iniqua  locorum 
Ineertam  explorare  viam  ;  sed  fila  seeutus, 
Quae  dubios  regerent  passus,  vestigia  tuta 
Fixit  inoffenso  gressu ;  gelidumque  sedile 
In  nudo  nactus  saxo,  quk  praetereuntium 
Unda  frequens  eonfluxit,  ibi  miserisque  tenebras 
Lamentis,  noetemque  oeulis  ploravit  obortam. 
Ploravit  nee  frustra  ;  obolum  dedit  alter  et  alter, 
Queis  eorda  et  mentem  indiderat  natura  benignam. 
Ad  latus  mterea  jacui  sopitus  herile, 
Vel  mediis  vigil  in  somnis ;  ad  herilia  jussa 
Auresque  atque  aninum  arreetus,  seu  frustula  amic^ 
Porrexit  soeiasque  dapes,  seu  longa  diei 
Taediaperpessus,  reditum  sub  nocte  parabat. 
Hi  mores,  haee  vita  fuit,  dum  fata  sinebant, 
Dum  neque  languebam  morbis,  nee  inerte  seneeti; 
Quae  tandem  obrepsit,  veterique  satellite  eaeeum 
Orbavit  dominum  :  prisci  sed  gratia  faeti 
Ne  tota  intereat,  longos  deleta  per  annos, 
Exiguum  hunc  Irus  tumulum  de  cespite  feeit, 
Etsi  inopis,  non  ingratae,  munuscula  dextrae ; 
Carmine  signavitque  brevi,  dominumque  canemque 
Quod  memoret,  fidumque  canem  dominumque  benignum. 

Poor  Irus'  faithful  wolf-dog  here  I  lie, 

That  wont  to  tend  my  old  blind  master's  steps. 

His  guide  and  guard :  nor,  while  my  service  lasted, 

Had  he  oeeasion  for  that  staff,  with  whieh 

He  now  goes  pieking  out  his  path  in  fear 

Over  the  highways  and  crossings ;  but  would  plant, 

Safe  in  the  conduct  of  my  friendly  string, 

A  firm  foot  forward  still,  till  he  had  reach'd 

His  poor  seat  on  some  stone,  nigh  where  the  tide 

Of  passers  by  in  thickest  confluence  flow'd : 

To  whom  with  loud  and  passionate  laments 

From  morn  to  eve  his  dark  estate  he  wail'd. 


OF  BEGGARS    IN   THE   METROPOLIS.       243 

Nor  wail'd  to  all  in  vain  :  some  here  and  there, 

The  well-disposed  and  good,  their  pennies  gave. 

I  meantime  at  his  feet  obsequious  slept; 

Not  all-asleep  in  sleep,  but  heart  and  ear 

Prick'd  up  at  his  least  motion ;  to  receive 

At  his  kind  hand  my  customary  crums, 

And  common  portion  in  his  feast  of  scraps ; 

Or  when  night  warn'd  us  homeward,  tired  and  spent 

With  our  long  day  and  tedious  beggary. 

These  were  my  manners,  this  my  way  of  life, 
Till  age  and  slow  disease  me  overtook, 
And  sever'd  from  my  sightless  master's  side. 
But  lest  the  grace  of  so  good  deeds  should  die, 
Through  tract  of  years  in  mute  oblivion  lost. 
This  slender  tomb  of  turf  hath  Irus  reared, 
Cheap  monument  of  no  ungrudging  hand, 
And  with  short  verse  inscribed  it,  to  attest. 
In  long  and  lasting  union  to  attest. 
The  virtues  of  the  Beggar  and  his  Dog. 

These  dim  eyes  have  in  vain  explored  for  some 
months  past  a  well-known  figure,  or  part  of  the  figure, 
of  a  man,  who  used  to  glide  his  comely  upper  half 
over  the  pavements  of  London,  wheeling  along  with 
most  ingenious  celerity  upon  a  machine  of  wood; 
a  spectacle  to  natives,  to  foreigners,  and  to  children. 
He  was  of  a  robust  make,  with  a  florid  sailor-like 
complexion,  and  his  head  was  bare  to  the  storm  and 
sunshine.  He  was  a  natural  curiosity,  a  speculation 
to  the  scientific,  a  prodigy  to  the  simple.  The  in- 
fant would  stare  at  the  mighty  man  brought  down  to 
his  own  level.  The  common  cripple  would  despise 
his  own  pusillanimity,  viewing  the  hale  stoutness, 
and  hearty  heart,  of  this  hnlf-limbed  giant.     Few  but 


244  A  COMPLAINT   OF   THE   DECAY 

must  have  noticed  him ;  for  the  accident,  which 
brought  him  low,  took  place  during  the  riots  of  1780, 
and  he  has  been  a  groundling  so  long.  He  seemed 
earth-born,  an  Antaeus,  and  to  suck  in  fresh  vigour 
from  the  soil  which  he  neighboured.  He  was  a 
grand  fragment ;  as  good  as  an  Elgin  marble.  The 
nature,  which  should  have  recruited  his  reft  legs  and 
thighs,  was  not  lost,  but  only  retired  into  his  upper 
parts,  and  he  was  half  a  Hercules.  I  heard  a  tre- 
mendous voice  thundering  and  growling,  as  before  an 
earthquake,  and  casting  down  my  eyes,  it  was  this 
mandrake  reviling  a  steed  that  had  started  at  his 
portentous  appearance.  He  seemed  to  want  but  his 
just  stature  to  have  rent  the  offending  quadruped  in 
shivers.  He  was  as  the  man-part  of  a  Centaur,  from 
which  the  horse-half  had  been  cloven  in  some  dire 
Lapithan  controversy.  He  moved  on,  as  if  he  could 
have  made  shift  with  yet  half  of  the  body-portion 
which  was  left  him.  The  os  sublime  was  not  want- 
ing ;  and  he  threw  out  yet  a  jolly  countenance  upon 
the  heavens.  Forty-and-two  years  had  he  driven 
this  out  of  door  trade,  and  now  that  his  hair  is  griz- 
zled in  the  service,  but  his  good  spirits  no  way  im- 
paired, because  he  is  not  content  to  exchange  his 
free  air  and  exercise  for  the  restraints  of  a  poor- 
house,  he  is  expiating  his  contumacy  in  one  of  those 
houses   (ironically  christened)   of  Correction. 

Was  a  daily  spectacle  like  this  to  be  deemed  a 


OF  BEGGARS  IN  THE  METROPOLIS.   245 

nuisance,  which  called  for  legal  interference  to  re- 
move? or  not  rather  a  salutary  and  a  touching  ob- 
ject, to  the  passers-by  in  a  great  city?  Among  her 
shows,  her  museums,  and  supplies  for  ever-gaping 
curiosity  (and  what  else  but  an  accumulation  of 
sights  —  endless  sights  —  is  a  great  city,  or  for  what 
else  is  it  desirable?)  was  there  not  room  for  one 
Lusus  (not  Naturce,  indeed,  but)  Accidentium  ? 
What  if  in  forty-and-two  years'  going  about,  the  man 
had  scraped  together  enough  to  give  a  portion  to 
his  child  (as  the  rumour  ran)  of  a  few  hundreds  — 
whom  had  he  injured?  —  whom  had  he  imposed 
upon?  The  contributors  had  enjoyed  their  sight  for 
their  pennies.  What  if  after  being  exposed  all  day 
to  the  heats,  the  rains,  and  the  frosts  of  heaven  — 
shuffling  his  ungainly  trunk  along  in  an  elaborate  and 
painful  motion  —  he  was  enabled  to  retire  at  night 
to  enjoy  himself  at  a  club  of  his  fellow  cripples  over 
a  dish  of  hot  meat  and  vegetables,  as  the  charge  was 
gravely  brought  against  him  by  a  clergyman  deposing 
before  a  House  of  Commons'  Committee  —  was  thiSy 
or  was  his  truly  paternal  consideration,  which  (if  a 
fact)  deserved  a  statue  rather  than  a  whipping-post, 
and  is  inconsistent  at  least  with  the  exaggeration  of 
nocturnal  orgies  which  he  has  been  slandered  with 
—  a  reason  that  he  should  be  deprived  of  his  chosen, 
harmless,  nay  edifying,  way  of  life,  and  be  committed 
in  hoary  age  for  a  sturdy  vagabond  ?  — 


246  A   COMPLAINT   OF   THE   DECAY 

There  was  a  Yorick  once,  whom  it  would  not  have 
shamed  to  have  sate  down  at  the  cripples'  feast,  and 
to  have  thrown  in  his  benediction,  ay,  and  his  mite 
too,  for  a  companionable  symbol.  "  Age,  thou  hast 
lost  thy  breed."  — 

Half  of  these  stories  about  the  prodigious  fortunes 
made  by  begging  are  (I  verily  believe)  misers'  calum- 
nies. One  was  much  talked  of  in  the  public  papers 
some  time  since,  and  the  usual  charitable  inferences 
deduced.  A  clerk  in  the  Bank  was  surprised  with  the 
announcement  of  a  five  hundred  pound  legacy  left 
him  by  a  person  whose  name  he  was  a  stranger  to. 
It  seems  that  in  his  daily  morning  walks  from  Peck- 
ham  (or  some  village  thereabouts)  where  he  lived,  to 
his  office,  it  had  been  his  practice  for  the  last  twenty 
years  to  drop  his  half-penny  duly  into  the  hat  of  some 
blind  Bartimeus,  that  sate  begging  alms  by  the  way- 
side in  the  Borough.  The  good  old  beggar  recog- 
nised his  daily  benefactor  by  the  voice  only;  and, 
when  he  died,  left  all  the  amassings  of  his  alms  (that 
had  been  half  a  century  perhaps  in  the  accumulating) 
to  his  old  Bank  friend.  Was  this  a  story  to  purse  up 
people's  hearts,  and  pennies,  against  giving  an  alms 
to  the  blind?  —  or  not  rather  a  beautiful  moral  of 
well-directed  charity  on  the  one  part,  and  noble  grat- 
itude upon  the  other? 

I  sometimes  wish  I  had  been  that  Bank  clerk. 

I  seem  to  remember  a  poor  old  grateful  kind  of 


OP  BEGGARS  IN  THE  METROPOLIS.       247 

creature,  blinking,  and  looking  up  with  his  no  eyes  in 
the  sun  — 

Is  it  possible  I  could  have  steeled  my  purse  against 
him? 

Perhaps  I  had  no  small  change. 

Reader,  do  not  be  frightened  at  the  hard  words, 
imposition,  imposture  — give^  and  ask  no  questions. 
Cast  thy  bread  upon  the  waters.  Some  have  un- 
awares (Hke  this  Bank  clerk)  entertained  angels. 

Shut  not  thy  purse-strings  always  against  painted 
distress.  Act  a  charity  sometimes.  When  a  poor 
creature  (outwardly  and  visibly  such)  comes  before 
thee,  do  not  stay  to  inquire  whether  the  "  seven  small 
children,"  in  whose  name  he  implores  thy  assistance, 
have  a  veritable  existence.  Rake  not  into  the  bowels 
of  unwelcome  truth,  to  save  a  half-penny.  It  is  good 
to  believe  him.  If  he  be  not  all  that  he  pretendeth, 
give^  and  under  a  personate  father  of  a  family,  think 
(if  thou  pleasest)  that  thou  hast  relieved  an  indigent 
bachelor.  When  they  come  with  their  counterfeit 
looks,  and  mumping  tones,  think  them  players.  You 
pay  your  money  to  see  a  comedian  feign  these  things, 
which,  concerning  these  poor  people,  thou  canst  not 
certainly  tell  whether  they  are  feigned  or  not. 


A   DISSERTATION   UPON   ROAST   PIG. 


Mankind,  says  a  Chinese  manuscript,  which  my  friend 
M.  was  obliging  enough  to  read  and  explain  to  me, 
for  the  first  seventy  thousand  ages  ate  their  meat  raw, 
clawing  or  biting  it  from  the  living  animal,  just  as 
they  do  in  Abyssinia  to  this  day.  This  period  is  not 
obscurely  hinted  at  by  their  great  Confucius  in  the 
second  chapter  of  his  Mundane  Mutations,  where  he 
designates  a  kind  of  golden  age  by  the  term  Cho-fang, 
literally  the  Cooks'  holiday.  The  manuscript  goes 
on  to  say,  that  the  art  of  roasting,  or  rather  broiling 
(which  I  take  to  be  the  elder  brother)  was  accident- 
ally discovered  in  the  manner  following.  The  swine- 
herd, Ho-ti,  having  gone  out  into  the  woods  one 
morning,  as  his  manner  was,  to  collect  mast  for  his 
hogs,  left  his  cottage  in  the  care  of  his  eldest  son 
Bo-bo,  a  great  lubberly  boy,  who  being  fond  of  play- 
ing with  fire,  as  younkers  of  his  age  commonly  are,  let 
some  sparks  escape  into  a  bundle  of  straw,  which 
kindling  quickly,  spread  the  conflagration  over  every 
part  of  their  poor   mansion,   till  it  was   reduced   to 


A  DISSERTATION   UPON   ROAST   PIG.      249 

ashes.  Together  with  the  cottage  (a~  sorry  antedilu- 
vian make-shift  of  a  building,  you  may  think  it),  what 
was  of  much  more  importance,  a  fine  Htter  of  new- 
farrowed  pigs,  no  less  than  nine  in  number,  perished. 
China  pigs  have  been  esteemed  a  luxury  all  over  the 
East  from  the  remotest  periods  that  we  read  of.  Bo- 
bo  was  in  the  utmost  consternation,  as  you  may  think, 
not  so  much  for  the  sake  of  the  tenement,  which  his 
father  and  he  could  easily  build  up  again  with  a  few 
dry  branches,  and  the  labour  of  an  hour  or  two,  at 
any  time,  as  for  the  loss  of  the  pigs.  While  he  was 
thinking  what  he  should  say  to  his  father,  and  wring- 
ing his  hands  over  the  smoking  remnants  of  one  of 
those  untimely  sufferers,  an  odour  assailed  his  nostrils, 
unlike  any  scent  which  he  had  before  experienced. 
What  could  it  proceed  from?  —  not  from  the  burnt 
cottage  —  he  had  smelt  that  smell  before  —  indeed 
this  was  by  no  means  the  first  accident  of  the  kind 
which  had  occurred  through  the  negligence  of  this  un- 
lucky young  fire-brand.  Much  less  did  it  resemble 
that  of  any  known  herb,  weed,  or  flower.  A  premoni- 
tory moistening  at  the  same  time  overflowed  his 
nether  lip.  He  knew  not  what  to  think.  He  next 
stooped  down  to  feel  the  pig,  if  there  were  any  signs 
of  life  in  it.  He  burnt  his  fingers,  and  to  cool  them 
he  applied  them  in  his  booby  fashion  to  his  mouth. 
Some  of  the  crums  of  the  scorched  skin  had  come 
away  with  his  fingers,  and  for  the  first  time  in  his  Hfe 


250     A  DISSERTATION  UPON  ROAST  PIG. 

(in  the  world's  life  indeed,  for  before  him  no  man  had 
known  it)  he  tasted  —  crackling  !  Again  he  felt  and 
fumbled  at  the  pig.  It  did  not  burn  him  so  much 
now,  still  he  licked  his  fingers  from  a  sort  of  habit. 
The  truth  at  length  broke  into  his  slow  understanding, 
that  it  was  the  pig  that  smelt  so,  and  the  pig  that 
tasted  so  delicious ;  and,  surrendering  himself  up  to 
the  new-born  pleasure,  he  fell  to  tearing  up  whole 
handfuls  of  the  scorched  skin  with  the  flesh  next  it, 
and  was  cramming  it  down  his  throat  in  his  beastly 
fashion,  when  his  sire  entered  amid  the  smoking 
rafters,  armed  with  retributory  cudgel,  and  finding  how 
affairs  stood,  began  to  rain  blows  upon  the  young 
rogue's  shoulders,  as  thick  as  hail-stones,  which  Bo-bo 
heeded  not  any  more  than  if  they  had  been  flies. 
The  tickling  pleasure,  which  he  experienced  in  his 
lower  regions,  had  rendered  him  quite  callous  to  any 
inconveniences  he  might  feel  in  those  remote  quarters. 
His  father  might  lay  on,  but  he  could  not  beat  him 
from  his  pig,  till  he  had  fairly  made  an  end  of  it,  when, 
becoming  a  little  more  sensible  of  his  situation,  some- 
thing like  the  following  dialogue  ensued. 

"  You  graceless  whelp,  what  have  you  got  there  de- 
vouring ?  Is  it  not  enough  that  you  have  burnt  me 
down  three  houses  with  your  dog's  tricks,  and  be 
hanged  to  you,  but  you  must  be  eating  fire,  and  I 
know  not  what  —  what  have  you  got  there,  I  say?  " 

"  O  father,  the  pig,  the  pig,  do  come  and  taste  how 
nice  the  burnt  pig  eats." 


A  DISSERTATION  UPON  ROAST  PIG.      25 1 

The  ears  of  Ho-ti  tingled  with  horsor.  He  cursed 
his  son,  and  he  cursed  himself  that  ever  he  should 
beget  a  son  that  should  eat  burnt  pig. 

Bo-bo,  whose  scent  was  wonderfully  sharpened 
since  morning,  soon  raked  out  another  pig,  and  fairly 
rending  it  assunder,  thrust  the  lesser  half  by  main 
force  into  the  fists  of  Ho-ti,  still  shouting  out  "  Eat, 
eat,  eat  the  burnt  pig,  father,  only  taste  —  O  Lord," 
—  with  such-like  barbarous  ejaculations,  cramming  all 
the  while  as  if  he  would  choke. 

Ho-ti  trembled  every  joint  while  he  grasped  the 
abominable  thing,  wavering  whether  he  should  not  put 
his  son  to  death  for  an  unnatural  young  monster,  when 
the  crackling  scorching  his  fingers,  as  it  had  done  his 
son's,  and  applying  the  same  remedy  to  them,  he  in  his 
turn  tasted  some  of  its  flavour,  which,  make  what  sour 
mouths  he  would  for  a  pretence,  proved  not  altogether 
displeasing  to  him.  In  conclusion  (for  the  manu- 
script here  is  a  little  tedious)  both  father  and  son 
fairly  sat  down  to  the  mess,  and  never  left  off  till  they 
had  despatched  all  that  remained  of  the  litter. 

Bo-bo  was  strictly  enjoined  not  to  let  the  secret 
escape,  for  the  neighbours  would  certainly  have  stoned 
them  for  a  couple  of  abominable  wretches,  who 
could  think  of  improving  upon  the  good  meat  which 
God  had  sent  them.  Nevertheless,  strange  stories 
got  about.  It  was  observed  that  Ho-ti's  cottage  was 
burnt  down  now  more  frequently  than  ever.     Nothing 


252      A  DISSERTATION   UPON   ROAST   PIG. 

but  fires  from  this  time  forward.  Some  would  break 
out  in  broad  day,  others  in  the  night-time.  As  often 
as  the  sow  farrowed,  so  sure  was  the  house  of  Ho-ti 
to  be  in  a  blaze  ;  and  Ho-ti  himself,  which  was  the 
more  remarkable,  instead  of  chastising  his  son,  seemed 
to  grow  more  indulgent  to  him  than  ever.  At  length 
they  were  watched,  the  terrible  mystery  discovered,  and 
father  and  son  summoned  to  take  their  trial  at  Pekin, 
then  an  inconsiderable  assize  town.  Evidence  was 
given,  the  obnoxious  food  itself  produced  in  court, 
and  verdict  about  to  be  pronounced,  when  the  fore- 
man of  the  jury  begged  that  some  of  the  burnt  pig, 
of  which  the  culprits  stood  accused,  might  be  handed 
into  the  box.  He  handled  it,  and  they  all  handled, 
it,  and  burning  their  fingers,  as  Bo-bo  and  his  father 
had  done  before  them,  and  nature  prompting  to  each 
of  them  the  same  remedy,  against  the  face  of  all  the 
facts,  and  the  clearest  charge  which  judge  had  ever 
given,  —  to  the  surprise  of  the  whole  court,  townsfolk, 
strangers,  reporters,  and  all  present  —  without  leaving 
the  box,  or  any  manner  of  consultation  whatever,  they 
brought  in  a  simultaneous  verdict  of  Not  Guilty. 

The  judge,  who  was  a  shrewd  fellow,  winked  at  the 
manifest  iniquity  of  the  decision  ;  and,  when  the  court 
was  dismissed,  went  privily,  and  bought  up  all  the 
pigs  that  could  be  had  for  love  or  money.  In  a  few 
days  his  Lordship's  town  house  was  observed  to  be  on 
fire.     The  thing  took  wing,  and  now  there  was  noth- 


A   DISSERTATION   UPON   ROAST  PIG.     253 

ing  to  be  seen  but  fires  in  every  direction.  Fuel  and 
pigs  grew  enormously  dear  all  over  the  district.  The 
insurance  offices  one  and  all  shut  up  shop.  People 
built  slighter  and  slighter  every  day,  until  it  was  feared 
that  the  very  science  of  architecture  would  in  no  long 
time  be  lost  to  the  world.  Thus  this  custom  of  firing 
houses  continued,  till  in  process  of  time,  says  my 
manuscript,  a  sage  arose,  like  our  Locke,  who  made 
a  discovery,  that  the  flesh  of  swine,  or  indeed  of 
any  other  animal,  might  be  cooked  {burnt^  as  they 
called  it)  without  the  necessity  of  consuming  a  whole 
house  to  dress  it.  Then  first  began  the  rude  form  of 
a  gridiron.  Roasting  by  the  string,  or  spit,  came  in 
a  century  or  two  later,  I  forget  in  whose  dynasty. 
By  such  slow  degrees,  concludes  the  manuscript,  do 
the  most  useful,  and  seemingly  the  most  obvious  arts, 
make  their  way  among  mankind. 

Without  placing  too  implicit  faith  in  the  account 
above  given,  it  must  be  agreed,  that  if  a  worthy  pre- 
text for  so  dangerous  an  experiment  as  setting  houses 
on  fire  (especially  in  these  days)  could  be  assigned 
in  favour  of  any  culinary  object,  that  pretext  and  ex- 
cuse might  be  found  in  roast  pig. 

Of  all  the  delicacies  in  the  whole  mundus  edidilis, 
I  will  maintain  it  to  be  the  most  delicate  — princeps 
obsoniorum, 

I  speak  not  of  your  grown  porkers  —  things  between 
pig  and  pork  —  those  hobbydehoys  —  but   a  young 


254      A  DISSERTATION   UPON    ROAST   PIG. 

and  tender  suckling  —  under  a  moon  old  —  guiltless 
as  yet  of  the  sty  —  with  no  original  speck  of  the 
amor  immtmditm,  the  hereditary  failing  of  the  first 
parent,  yet  manifest  —  his  voice  as  yet  not  broken, 
but  something  between  a  childish  treble,  and  a 
grumble  —  the  mild  forerunner,  or  prceludium,  of  a 
grunt. 

He  must  be  roasted.  I  am  not  ignorant  that  our 
ancestors  ate  them  seethed,  or  boiled  —  but  what  a 
sacrifice  of  the  exterior  tegument ! 

There  is  no  flavour  comparable,  I  will  contend,  to 
that  of  the  crisp,  tawny,  well-watched,  not  over- roasted, 
crackling,  as  it  is  well  called  —  the  very  teeth  are  in- 
vited to  their  share  of  the  pleasure  at  this  banquet  in 
overcoming  the  coy,  brittle  resistance  —  with  the 
adhesive  oleaginous' — O  call  it  not  fat  —  but  an  in- 
definable sweetness  growing  up  to  it  —  the  tender 
blossoming  of  fat  —  fat  cropped  in  the  bud  —  taken 
in  the  shoot  —  in  the   first  innocence  —  the  cream 

and  quintessence  of  the  child-pig's  yet  pure  food 

the  lean,  no  lean,  but  a  kind  of  animal  manna  —  or, 
rather,  fat  and  lean  (if  it  must  be  so)  so  blended  and 
running  into  each  other,  that  both  together  make  but 
one  ambrosian  result,  or  common  substance. 

Behold  him,  while  he  is  doing  —  it  seemeth  rather 
a  refreshing  warmth,  than  a  scorching  heat,  that  he  is 
so  passive  to.  How  equably  he  twirleth  round  the 
string  !  —  Now  he  is  just  done.     To  see  the  extreme 


A   DISSERTATION   UPON   ROAST    PIG.      255 

sensibility  of  that  tender  age,  he  hath  wept  out  his 
pretty  eyes  —  radiant  jellies  —  shooting  stars  — 
""  See  him  in  the  dish,  |  his  second  cradle^  how  meek 
he  lieth  !  —  wouldst  thou  have  had  this  innocent  grow 
up  to  the  grossness  and  indocility  which  too  often  ac- 
company maturer  swinehood?  Ten  to  one  he  would 
have  proved  a  glutton,  a  sloven,  an  obstinate,  dis- 
agreeable animal  ^-  wallowing  in  all  manner  of  filthy 
conversation  —  from  these  sins  he  is  happily  snatched 

away  — 

Ere  sin  could  blight,  or  sorrow  fade. 
Death  came  with  timely  care  — 

his  memory  is  odoriferous  —  no  clown  curseth,  while 
his  stomach  half  rejecteth,  the  rank  bacon  —  no  coal- 
heaver  bolteth  him  in  reeking  sausages  —  he  hath  a 
fair  sepulchre  in  the  grateful  stomach  of  the  judicious 
epicure  —  and  for  such  a  tomb  might  be  content  to 
die. 

He  is  the  best  of  Sapors.  Pine-apple  is  great. 
She  is  indeed  almost  too  transcendent  —  a  delight,  if 
not  sinful,  yet  so  like  to  sinning,  that  really  a  tender- 
conscienced  person  would  do  well  to  pause  —  too 
ravishing  for  mortal  taste,  she  woundeth  and  excori- 
ateth  the  lips  that  approach  her  —  like  lovers'  kisses, 
she  biteth  —  she  is  a  pleasure  bordering  on  pain  from 
the  fierceness  and  insanity  of  her  relish  —  but  she 
stoppeth  at  the  palate  —  she  meddleth  not  with  the 
appetite  —  and  the  coarsest  hunger  might  barter  her 
consistently  for  a  mutton  chop. 


256     A  DISSERTATION  UPON  ROAST  PIG. 

Pig  —  let  me  speak  his  praise  —  is  no  less  provoca- 
tive of  the  appetite,  than  he  is  satisfactory  to  the  criti- 
calness  of  the  censorious  palate.  The  strong  man 
may  batten  on  him,  and  the  weakling  refuseth  not  his 
mild  juices. 

Unlike  to  mankind's  mixed  characters,  a  bundle  of 
virtues  and  vices,  inexplicably  intertwisted,  and  not  to 
be  unravelled  without  hazard,  he  is  —  good  through- 
out. No  part  of  him  is  better  or  worse  than  another. 
He  helpeth,  as  far  as  his  little  means  extend,  all 
around.  He  is  the  least  envious  of  banquets.  He  is 
all  neighbours*  fare. 

I  am  one  of  those,  who  freely  and  ungrudgingly 
impart  a  share  of  the  good  things  of  this  life  which 
fall  to  their  lot  (few  as  mine  are  in  this  kind)  to  a 
friend.  I  protest  I  take  as  great  an  interest  in  my 
friend's  pleasures,  his  relishes,  and  proper  satisfactions, 
as  in  mine  own.  "  Presents,"  I  often  say,  "  endear 
Absents."  Hares,  pheasants,  partridges,  snipes,  barn- 
door chickens  (those  "tame  villatic  fowl"),  capons, 
plovers,  brawn,  barrels  of  oysters,  I  dispense  as  freely 
as  I  receive  them.  I  love  to  taste  them,  as  it  were, 
upon  the  tongue  of  my  friend.  But  a  stop  must  be 
put  somewhere.  One  would  not,  like  Lear,  "  give 
every  thing."  I  make  my  stand  upon  pig.  Methinks 
it  is  an  ingratitude  to  the  Giver  of  all  good  flavours, 
to  extra-domiciliate,  or  send  out  of  the  house,  slight- 
ingly,   (under  pretext  of  friendship,  or  I  know  not 


A   DISSERTATION   UPON   ROAST   PIG.      257 

what)  a  blessing  so  particularly  adapted,  predestined, 
I  may  say,  jto  my  individual  palate  —  It  argues  an  in- 
sensibility.J 

I  remember  a  touch  of  conscience  in  this  kind  at 
school.  My  good  old  aunt,  who  never  parted  from 
me  at  the  end  of  a  holiday  without  stuffing  a  sweet- 
meat, or  some  nice  thing,  into  my  pocket,  had  dis- 
missed me  one  evening  with  a  smoking  plum-cake, 
fresh  from  the  oven.  In  my  way  to  school  (it  was  over 
London  bridge)  a  grey-headed  old  beggar  saluted  me  (I 
have  no  doubt  at  this  time  of  day  that  he  was  a  coun- 
terfeit) .  I  had  no  pence  to  console  him  with,  and  in 
the  vanity  of  self-denial,  and  the  very  coxcombry  of 
charity,  school-boy-like,  I  made  him  a  present  of  — 
the  whole  cake  !  I  walked  on  a  little,  buoyed  up,  as 
one  is  on  such  occasions,  with  a  sweet  soothing  of  self- 
satisfaction  j  but  before  I  had  got  to  the  end  of  the 
bridge,  my  better  feelings  returned,  and  I  burst  into 
tears,  thinking  how  ungrateful  I  had  been  to  my  good 
aunt,  to  go  and  give  her  good  gift  away  to  a  stranger, 
that  I  had  never  seen  before,  and  who  might  be  a 
bad  man  for  aught  I  knew ;  and  then  I  thought  of 
the  pleasure  my  aunt  would  be  taking  in  thinking  that 
I  —  I  myself,  and  not  another  —  would  eat  her  nice 
cake  —  and  what  should  I  say  to  her  the  next  time  I 
saw  her  —  how  naughty  I  was  to  part  with  her  pretty 
present  —  and  the  odour  of  that  spicy  cake  came  back 
upon  my  recollection,  and  the  pleasure  and  the  curi- 

17 


258      A  DISSERTATION   UPON   ROAST   PIG. 

osity  I  had  taken  in  seeing  her  make  it,  and  her  joy 
when  she  sent  it  to  the  oven,  and  how  disappointed 
she  would  feel  that  I  had  never  had  a  bit  of  it  in  my 
mouth  at  last  —  and  I  blamed  my  impertinent  spirit 
of  alms-giving,  and  out-of-place  hypocrisy  of  good- 
ness, and  above  all  I  v/ished  never  to  see  the  face 
again  of  that  insidious,  good-for-nothing,  old  grey 
impostor. 

Our  ancestors  were  nice  in  their  method  of  sacri- 
hcing  these  tender  victims.  We  read  of  pigs  whipt 
to  death  with  something  of  a  shock,  as  we  hear  of  any 
other  obsolete  custom.  The  age  of  discipHne  is  gone 
by,  or  it  would  be  curious  to  inquire  (in  a  philo- 
sophical light  merely)  what  effect  this  process  might 
have  towards  intenerating  and  dulcifying  a  substance, 
naturally  so  mild  and  dulcet  as  the  flesh  of  young  pigs. 
It  looks  like  refining  a  violet.  Yet  we  should  be 
cautious,  while  we  condemn  the  inhumanity,  how  we 
censure  the  wisdom  of  the  practice.  It  might  im- 
part a  gusto  — 

I  remember  an  hypothesis,  argued  upon  by  the 
young  students,  when  I  was  at  St.  Omer's,  and  main- 
tained with  much  learning  and  pleasantry  on  both 
sides,  "  Whether,  supposing  that  the  flavour  of  a  pig 
who  obtained  his  death  by  whipping  {per  flagcllatio- 
nem  extremam)  superadded  a  pleasure  upon  the  palate 
of  a  man  more  intense  than  any  possible  suffering  we 
can  conceive  in  the  animal,  is  man  justified  in  using 


A  DISSERTATION  UPON  ROAST  PIG.      259 

that  method  of  putting  the  animal  to  death  ?  "     I  for- 
get the  decision. 

His  sauce  should  be  considered.  Decidedly,  a  few 
bread  crums,  done  up  with  his  liver  and  brains,  and 
a  dash  of  mild  sage.  But,  banish,  dear  Mrs.  Cook,  I 
beseech  you,  the  whole  onion  tribe.  Barbecue  your 
whole  hogs  to  your  palate,  steep  them  in  shalots,  stiiff 
them  out  with  plantations  of  the  rank  and  guilty  gar- 
lic ;  you  cannot  poison  them,  or  make  them  stronger 
than  they  are  —  but  consider,  he  is  a  weakling  —  a 
flower. 


A  BACHELOR'S   COMPLAINT   OF  THE 
BEHAVIOUR  OF  MARRIED  PEOPLE. 


As  a  single  man,  I  have  spent  a  good  deal  of  my 
time  in  noting  down  the  infirmities  of  Married 
People,  to  console  myself  for  those  superior  pleas- 
ures, which  they  tell  me  I  have  lost  by  remainmg 
as  I  am. 

I  cannot  say  that  the  quarrels  of  men  and  their 
wives  ever  made  any  great  impression  upon  me,  or 
had  much  tendency  to  strengthen  me  in  those  anti- 
social resolutions,  which  I  took  up  long  ago  upon 
more  substantial  considerations.  What  oftenest  of- 
fends me  at  the  houses  of  married  persons  where  I 
visit,  is  an  error  of  quite  a  different  description ;  —  it 
is  that  they  are  too  loving. 

Not  too  loving  neither :  that  does  not  explain  my 
meaning.  Besides,  why  should  that  offend  me? 
The  very  act  of  separating  themselves  from  the  rest 
of  the  world,  to  have  the  fuller  enjoyment  of  each 
other's  society,  implies  that  they  prefer  one  another 
to  all  the  world. 


BEHAVIOUR    OF  MARRIED   PEOPLE.     26 1 

But  what  I  complain  of  is,  that  they  carry  this 
preference  so  undisguisedly,  they  perk  it  up  in  the 
faces  of  us  single  people  so  shamelessly,  you  cannot 
be  in  their  company  a  moment  without  being  made 
to  feel,  by  some  indirect  hint  or  open  avowal,  that 
you  are  not  the  object  of  this  preference.  Now  there 
are  some  things  which  give  no  offence,  while  implied 
or  taken  for  granted  merely ;  but  expressed,  there  is 
much  offence  in  them.  If  a  man  were  to  accost  the 
first  homely-featured  or  plain-dressed  young  woman 
of  his  acquaintance,  and  tell  her  bluntly,  that  she 
was  not  handsome  or  rich  enough  for  him,  and  he 
could  not  marry  her,  he  would  deserve  to  be  kicked 
for  his  ill  manners;  yet  no  less  is  implied  in  the 
fact,  that  having  access  and  opportunity  of  putting 
the  question  to  her,  he  has  never  yet  thought  fit  to 
do  it.  The  young  woman  understands  this  as  clearly 
as  if  it  were  put  into  words ;  but  no  reasonable  young 
woman  would  think  of  making  this  the  ground  of  a 
quarrel.  Just  as  little  right  have  a  married  couple 
to  tell  me  by  speeches,  and  looks  that  are  scarce  less 
plain  than  speeches,  that  I  am  not  the  happy  man,  — 
the  lady's  choice.  It  is  enough  that  I  know  I  am 
not :  I  do  not  want  this  perpetual  reminding. 

The  display  of  superior  knowledge  or  riches  may 
be  made  sufficiently  mortifying;  but  these  admit  of 
a  palliative.  The  knowledge  which  is  brought  out 
to  insult  me,  may  accidentally  improve  me;  and  in 


262      A   BACHELOR'S   COMPLAINT   OF  THE 

the  rich  man's  houses  and  pictures,  —  his  parks  and 
gardens,  I  have  a  temporary  usufruct  at  least.  But 
the  display  of  married  happiness  has  none  of  these 
palliatives :  it  is  throughout  pure,  unrecompensed, 
unqualified  insult. 

Marriage  by  its  best  title  is  a  monopoly,  and  not  of 
the  least  invidious  sort.  It  is  the  cunning  of  most 
possessors  of  any  exclusive  privilege  to  keep  their 
advantage  as  much  out  of  sight  as  possible,  that  their 
less  favoured  neighbours,  seeing  little  of  the  benefit, 
may  the  less  be  disposed  to  question  the  right.  But 
these  married  monopolists  thrust  the  most  obnoxious 
part  of  their  patent  into  our  faces. 

Nothing  is  to  me  more  distasteful  than  that  entire 
complacency  and  satisfaction  which  beam  in  the 
countenances  of  a  new-married  couple,  —  in  that  of 
the  lady  particularly  :  it  tells  you,  that  her  lot  is  dis- 
posed of  in  this  world ;  that  you  can  have  no  hopes 
of  her.  It  is  true,  I  have  none;  nor  wishes  either, 
perhaps :  but  this  is  one  of  those  truths  which  ought, 
as  I  said  before,  to  be  taken  for  granted,  not 
expressed. 

The  excessive  airs  which  those  people  give  them- 
selves, founded  on  the  ignorance  of  us  unmarried 
people,  would  be  more  offensive  if  they  were  less 
irrational.  We  will  allow  them  to  understand  the 
mysteries  belonging  to  their  own  craft  better  than 
we  who  have  not  had  the  happiness  to  be  made  free 


BEHAVIOUR  OF   MARRIED   PEOPLE.     263 

of  the  company :  but  their  arrogance  is  not  content 
within  these  limits.  If  a  single  person  presume  to 
offer  his  opinion  in  their  presence,  though  upon  the 
most  indifferent  subject,  he  is  immediately  silenced 
as  an  incompetent  person.  Nay,  a  young  married 
lady  of  my  acquaintance,  who,  the  best  of  the  jest 
was,  had  not  changed  her  condition  above  a  fort- 
night before,  in  a  question  on  which  I  had  the  mis- 
fortune to  differ  from  her,  respecting  the  properest 
mode  of  breeding  oysters  for  the  London  market, 
had  the  assurance  to  ask  with  a  sneer,  how  such  an 
old  Bachelor  as  I  could  pretend  to  know  any  thing 
about  such  matters. 

But  what  I  have  spoken  of  hitherto  is  nothing  to 
the  airs  which  these  creatures  give  themselves  when 
they  come,  as  they  generally  do,  to  have  children. 
When  I  consider  how  little  of  a  rarity  children  are, 
—  that  every  street  and  blind  alley  swarms  with 
them,  —  that  the  poorest  people  commonly  have 
them  in  most  abundance,  —  that  there  are  few  mar- 
riages that  are  not  blest  with  at  least  one  of  these 
bargains,  —  how  often  they  turn  out  ill,  and  defeat 
the  fond  hopes  of  their  parents,  taking  to  vicious 
courses,  which  end  in  poverty,  disgrace,  the  gallows, 
&c.  —  I  cannot  for  my  life  tell  what  cause  for  pride 
there  can  possibly  be  in  having  them.  If  they  were 
young  phoenixes,  indeed,  that  were  bom  but  one  in 
a  year,  their  might  be  a  pretext.  But  when  they 
are  so  common 


264     A  BACHELOR'S    COMPLAINT   OF  THE 

I  do  not  advert  to  the  insolent  merit  which  they 
assume  with  their  husbands  on  these  occasions.  Let 
them  look  to  that.  But  why  we,  who  are  not  their 
natural- bom  subjects,  should  be  expected  to  bring 
our  spices,  myrrh,  and  incense,  —  our  tribute  and 
homage  of  admiration,  —  I  do  not  see. 

"  Like  as  the  arrows  in  the  hand  of  the  giant,  even 
so  are  the  young  children :  "  so  says  the  excellent 
office  in  our  Prayer-book  appointed  for  the  churching 
of  women.  *'  Happy  is  the  man  that  hath  his  quiver 
full  of  them :  "  So  say  I ;  but  then  don't  let  him 
discharge  his  quiver  upon  us  that  are  weaponless ;  — 
let  them  be  arrows,  but  not  to  gall  and  stick  us.  I 
have  generally  observed  that  these  arrows  are  double- 
headed  :  they  have  two  forks,  to  be  sure  to  hit  with 
one  or  the  other.  As  for  instance,  where  you  come 
into  a  house  which  is  full  of  children,  if  you  happen 
to  take  no  notice  of  them  (you  are  thinking  of  some^ 
thing  else,  perhaps,  and  turn  a  deaf  ear  to  their  in- 
nocent caresses),  you  are  set  down  as  untractable, 
morose,  a  hater  of  children.  On  the  other  hand,  if 
you  find  them  more  than  usually  engaging,  —  if  you 
are  taken  with  their  pretty  manners  and  set  about  in 
earnest  to  romp  and  play  with  them,  some  pretext  or 
other  is  sure  to  be  found  for  sending  them  out  of  the 

room  :  they  are  too  noisy  or  boisterous,  or  Mr. ■ 

does  not  like  children.  With  one  or  other  of  these 
forks  the  arrow  is  sure  to  hit  you. 


BEHAVIOUR   OF  MARRIED   PEOPLE.     265 

I  could  forgive  their  jealousy,  and  dispense  with 
toying  with  their  brats,  if  it  gives  them  any  pain; 
but  I  think  it  unreasonable  to  be  called  upon  to  love 
them,  where  I  see  no  occasion,  —  to  love  a  whole 
family,  perhaps,  eight,  nine,  or  ten,  indiscriminately, 
—  to  love  all  the  pretty  dears,  because  children  are 
so  engaging. 

I  know  there  is  a  proverb,  "  Love  me,  love  my 
dog :  "  that  is  not  always  so  very  practicable,  par- 
ticularly if  the  dog  be  set  upon  you  to  tease  you  or 
snap  at  you  in  sport.  But  a  dog,  or  a  lesser  thing,  — 
any  inanimate  substance,  as  a  keep- sake,  a  watch  or 
a  ring,  a  tree,  or  the  place  where  we  last  parted  when 
my  friend  went  away  upon  a  long  absence,  I  can 
make  shift  to  love,  because  I  love  him,  and  any  thing 
that  reminds  me  of  him ;  provided  it  be  in  its  na- 
ture indifferent,  and  apt  to  receive  whatever  hue 
fancy  can  give  it.  But  children  have  a  real  char- 
acter and  an  essential  being  of  themselves  :  they  are 
amiable  or  unamiable  per  se ;  I  must  love  or  hate 
them  as  I  see  cause  for  either  in  their  qualities.  A 
child's  nature  is  too  serious  a  thing  to  admit  of  its 
being  regarded  as  a  mere  appendage  to  another 
being,  and  to  be  loved  or  hated  accordingly :  they 
stand  with  me  upon  their  own  stock,  as  much  as 
men  and  women  do.  O  !  but  you  will  say,  sure  it 
is  an  attractive  age,  —  there  is  something  in  the 
tender   years   of  infancy   that   of   itself  charms   us. 


266     A  BACHELOR'S   COMPLAINT   OF  THE 

That  is  the  very  reason  why  I  am  more  nice  about 
them.  I  know  that  a  sweet  child  is  the  sweetest 
thing  in  nature,  not  even  excepting  the  deUcate 
creatures  which  bear  them ;  but  the  prettier  the  kind 
of  a  thing  is,  the  more  desirable  it  is  that  it  should 
be  pretty  of  its  kind.  One  daisy  differs  not  much 
from  another  in  glory :  but  a  violet  should  look  and 
smell  the  daintiest.  —  I  was  always  rather  squeamish 
in  my  women  and  children. 

But  this  is  not  the  worst :  one  must  be  admitted 
into  their  familiarity  at  least,  before  they  can  com- 
plain of  inattention.  It  imphes  visits,  and  some 
kind  of  intercourse.  But  if  the  husband  be  a  man 
with  whom  you  have  lived  on  a  friendly  footing  be- 
fore marriage,  —  if  you  did  not  come  in  on  the 
wife's  side,  —  if  you  did  not  sneak  into  the  house  in 
her  train,  but  were  an  old  friend  in  fast  habits  of 
intimacy  before  their  courtship  was  so  much  as 
thought  on,  —  look  about  you  —  your  tenure  is  pre- 
carious—  before  a  twelvemonth  shall  roll  over  your 
head,  you  shall  find  your  old  friend  gradually  grow 
cool  and  altered  towards  you,  and  at  last  seek  op- 
portunities of  breaking  with  you.  I  have  scarce  a 
married  friend  of  my  acquaintance,  upon  whose  firm 
faith  I  can  rely,  whose  friendship  did  not  commence 
after  the  period  of  his  marriage.  With  some  limi- 
tations they  can  endure  that :  but  that  the  good  man 
should  have  dared  to  enter  into  a  solemn  league  of 


BEHAVIOUR  OF  MARRIED   PEOPLE.     267 

friendship  in  which  they  were  not  consulted,  though 
it  happened  before  they  knew  him,  —  before  they 
that  are  now  man  and  wife  ever  met,  —  this  is  in- 
tolerable to  them.  Every  long  friendship,  every  old 
authentic  intimacy,  must  be  brought  into  their  office 
to  be  new  stamped  with  their  currency,  as  a  sovereign 
Prince  calls  in  the  good  old  money  that  was  coined 
in  some  reign  before  he  was  bom  or  thought  of,  to 
be  new  marked  and  minted  with  the  stamp  of  his 
authority,  before  he  will  let  it  pass  current  in  the 
world.  You  may  guess  what  luck  generally  befalls 
such  a  rusty  piece  of  metal  as  I  am  in  these  new 
mintings. 

Innumerable  are  the  ways  which  they  take  to  in- 
sult and  worm  you  out  of  their  husband's  confidence. 
Laughing  at  all  you  say  with  a  kind  of  wonder,  as  if 
you  were  a  queer  kind  of  fellow  that  said  good  things, 
but  an  oddity y  is  one  of  the  ways;  —  they  have  a 
particular  kind  of  stare  for  the  purpose  :  —  till  at  last 
the  husband,  who  used  to  refer  to  your  judgment, 
and  would  pass  over  some  excrescences  of  under- 
standing and  manner  for  the  sake  of  a  general  vein 
of  observation  (not  quite  vulgar)  which  he  perceived 
in  you,  begins  to  suspect  whether  you  are  not  alto- 
gether a  humorist,  —  a  fellow  well  enough  to  have 
consorted  with  in  his  bachelor  days,  but  not  quite  so 
proper  to  be  introduced  to  ladies.  This  may  be 
called  the  staring  way ;  and  is  that  which  has  oftenest 
been  put  in  practice  against  me. 


268      A   BACHELOR'S   COMPLAINT  OF  THE 

Then  there  is  the  exaggerating  way,  or  the  wa)' 
of  irony :  that  is,  where  they  find  you  an  object  of 
especial  regard  with  their  husband,  who  is  not  so 
easily  to  be  shaken  from  the  lasting  attachment 
founded  on  esteem  which  he  has  conceived  towards 
you;  by  never-qualified  exaggerations  to  cry  up  all 
that  you  say  or  do,  till  the  good  man,  who  under- 
stands well  enough  that  it  is  all  done  in  compliment 
to  him,  grows  weary  of  the  debt  of  gratitude  which 
is  due  to  so  much  candour,  and  by  relaxing  a  little 
on  his  part,  and  taking  down  a  peg  or  two  in  his 
enthusiasm,  sinks  at  length  to  that  kindly  level  of 
moderate  esteem,  —  that  "  decent  affection  and  com- 
placent kindness  "  towards  you,  where  she  herself 
can  join  in  sympathy  with  him  without  much  stretch 
and  violence  to  her  sincerity. 

Another  way  (for  the  ways  they  have  to  accomplish 
so  desirable  a  purpose  are  infinite)  is,  with  a  kind  of 
innocent  simplicity,  continually  to  mistake  what  it 
was  which  first  made  their  husband  fond  of  you.  If 
an  esteem  for  something  excellent  in  your  moral 
character  was  that  which  riveted  the  chain  which  she 
is  to  break,  upon  any  imaginary  discovery  of  a  want 
of  poignancy  in  your  conversation,  she  will  cry,  "I 
thought,  my  dear,  you   described   your  friend,  Mr. 

as  a  great  wit.**     If,  on  the  other  hand,  it 

was  for  some  supposed  charm  in  your  conversation 
that  he  first  grew  to  like  you,  and  was  content   for 


BEHAVIOUR   OF  MARRIED   PEOPLE.     269 

this  to  overlook  some  trifling  irregularities  in  your 
moral  deportment,  upon  the  first  notice  of  any  of 
these  she   as  readily  exclaims,   "This,   my  dear,  is 

your  good  Mr.  ."     One  good  lady  whom  I 

took  the  liberty  of  expostulating  with  for  not  showing 
rae  quite  so  much  respect  as  I  thought  due  to  her 
husband's  old  friend,  had  the  candour  to  confess  to 

me  that  she   had  often  heard  Mr. speak  of 

me  before  marriage,  and  that  she  had  conceived  a 
great  desire  to  be  acquainted  with  me,  but  that  the 
sight  of  me  had  very  much  disappointed  her  expec- 
tations; for  from  her  husband's  representations  of 
me,  she  had  formed  a  notion  that  she  was  to  see  a 
fine,  tall,  officer-like  looking  man  (I  use  her  very 
words)  ;  the  very  reverse  of  which  proved  to  be  the 
truth.  This  was  candid ;  and  I  had  the  civility  not 
to  ask  her  in  return,  how  she  came  to  pitch  upon 
a  standard  of  personal  accomplishments  for  her  hus- 
band's friends  which  differed  so  much  from  his  own ; 
for  my  friend's  dimensions  as  near  as  possible  ap- 
proximate to  mine ;  he  standing  five  feet  five  in  his 
shoes,  in  which  I  have  the  advantage  of  him  by 
about  half  an  inch ;  and  he  no  more  than  myself 
exhibiting  any  indications  of  a  martial  character  in 
his  air  or  countenance. 

These  are  some  of  the  mortifications  which  I  have 
encountered  in  the  absurd  attempt  to  visit  at  their 
houses.     To  enumerate   them   all   would   be  a  vain 


2/0     A  BACHELOR'S   COMPLAINT  OF   THE 

endeavour :  I  shall  therefore  just  glance  at  the  very 
common  impropriety  of  which  married  ladies  are 
guilty,  —  of  treating  us  as  if  we  were  their  husbands, 
and  vice  versa.  I  mean,  when  they  use  us  with 
familiarity,  and  their  husbands  with  ceremony.  Tes- 
tacea,  for  instance,  kept  me  the  other  night  two  or 
three  hours  beyond  my  usual  time  of  supping,  while 

she  was  fretting  because  Mr. did  not  come 

home,  till  the  oysters  were  all  spoiled,  rather  than 
she  would  be  guilty  of  the  impoliteness  of  touching 
one  in  his  absence.  This  was  reversing  the  point  of 
good  manners  :  for  ceremony  is  an  invention  to  take 
off  the  uneasy  feeling  which  we  derive  from  knowing 
ourselves  to  be  less  the  object  of  love  and  esteem 
with  a  fellow- creature  than  some  other  person  is. 
It  endeavours  to  make  up,  by  superior  attentions  in 
little  points,  for  that  invidious  preference  which  it  is 
forced  to  deny  in  the  greater.  Had  Testacea  kept 
the  oysters  back  for  me,  and  withstood  her  husband's 
importunities  to  go  to  supper,  she  would  have  acted 
according  to  the  strict  rules  of  propriety.  I  know 
no  ceremony  that  ladies  are  boimd  to  observe  to 
their  husbands,  beyond  the  point  of  a  modest  be- 
haviour and  decorum :  therefore  I  must  protest 
against  the  vicarious  gluttony  of  Cerasia,  who  at 
her  own  table  sent  away  a  dish  of  Morellas,  which  I 
was  applying  to  with  great  good  will,  to  her  husband 
at  the  other  end  of  the  table,  and  recommended  a 


BEHAVIOUR   OF  MARRIED   PEOPLE.     27 1 

plate  of  less  extraordinary  gooseberries   to  my  un- 
wedded  palate  in  their  stead.     Neither  can  I  excuse 

the  wanton  affront  of . 

But  I  am  weary  of  stringing  up  all  my  married 
acquaintance  by  Roman  denominations.  Let  them 
amend  and  change  their  manners,  or  I  promise  to 
record  the  full-length  English  of  their  names,  to  the 
terror  of  all  such  desperate  offenders  in  future. 


ON   SOME   OF  THE   OLD   ACTORS. 


The  casual  sight  of  an  old  Play  Bill,  which  I  picked 
up  the  other  day  —  I  know  not  by  what  chance  it 
was  preserved  so  long  —  tempts  me  to  call  to  mind 
a  few  of  the  Players,  who  make  the  principal  figure 
in  it.  It  presents  the  cast  of  parts  in  the  Twelfth 
Night,  at  the  old  Drury-lane  Theatre  two-and-thirty 
years  ago.  There  is  something  very  touching  in 
these  old  remembrances.  They  make  us  think  how 
we  once  used  to  read  a  Play  Bill  —  not,  as  now  per- 
adventure,  singling  out  a  favourite  performer,  and 
casting  a  negligent  eye  over  the  rest;  but  spelling 
out  every  name,  down  to  the  very  mutes  and  ser- 
vants of  the  scene ;  —  when  it  was  a  matter  of  no 
small  moment  to  us  whether  Whitfield,  or  Packer, 
took  the  part  of  Fabian ;  when  Benson,  and  Burton, 
and  Phillimore  —  names  of  small  account  —  had  an 
importance,  beyond  what  we  can  be  content  to  at- 
tribute now  to  the  time's  best  actors.  —  "  Orsino,  by 
Mr.  Barrymore."  —  What  a  full  Shakspearian  sound 


ON  SOME  OF  THE  OLD  ACTORS.    2/3 

it  carries !  how  fresh   to  memory  arise   the   image, 
and  the  manner,  of  the  gentle  actor ! 

Those  who  have  only  seen  Mrs.  Jordan  within 
the  last  ten  or  fifteen  years,  can  have  no  adequate 
notion  of  her  performance  of  such  parts  as  Ophelia ; 
Helena,  in  All 's  Well  that  Ends  Well ;  and  Viola  in 
this  play.  Her  voice  had  latterly  acquired  a  coarse- 
ness, which  suited  well  enough  with  her  Nells  and 
Hoydens,  but  in  those  days  it  sank,  with  her  steady 
melting  eye,  into  the  heart.  Her  joyous  parts  —  in 
which  her  memory  now  chiefly  lives  —  in  her  youth 
were  outdone  by  her  plaintive  ones.  There  is  no 
giving  an  account  how  she  delivered  the  disguised 
story  of  her  love  for  Orsino.  It  was  no  set  speech, 
that  she  had  foreseen,  so  as  to  weave  it  into  an  har- 
monious period,  line  necessarily  following  line,  to 
make  up  the  music  —  yet  I  have  heard  it  so  spoken, 
or  rather  read,  not  without  its  grace  and  beauty  — 
but,  when  she  had  declared  her  sister's  history  to 
be  a  "  blank,"  and  that  she  "  never  told  her  love," 
there  was  a  pause,  as  if  the  story  had  ended  —  and 
then  the  image  of  the  "worm  in  the  bud"  came  up 
as  a  new  suggestion  —  and  the  heightened  image  of 
"  Patience "  still  followed  after  that,  as  by  some 
growing  (and  not  mechanical)  process,  thought 
springing  up  after  thought,  I  would  almost  say,  as 
they  were  watered  by  her  tears.  So  in  those  fine 
lines  — 

i8 


274  ON  SOME  OF  THE   OLD   ACTORS. 

Write  loyal  cantos  of  contemned  love  — 
Hollow  your  name  to  the  reverberate  hills  — 

there  was  no  preparation  made  in  the  foregoing 
image  for  that  which  was  to  follow.  She  used  no 
rhetoric  in  her  passion ;  or  it  was  nature's  own  rhe- 
toric, most  legitimate  then,  when  it  seemed  alto- 
gether without  rule  or  law. 

Mrs.  Powel  (now  Mrs.  Renard),  then  in  the  pride 
of  her  beauty,  made  an  admirable  Olivia.  She  was 
particularly  excellent  in  her  unbending  scenes  in 
conversation  with  the  Clown.  I  have  seen  some 
Olivias  —  and  those  very  sensible  actresses  too  — 
who  in  these  interlocutions  have  seemed  to  set  their 
wits  at  the  jester,  and  to  vie  conceits  with  him  in 
downright  emulation.  But  she  used  him  for  her 
sport,  like  what  he  was,  to  trifle  a  leisure  sentence 
or  two  with,  and  then  to  be  dismissed,  and  she  to 
be  the  Great  Lady  still.  She  touched  the  imperious 
fantastic  humour  of  the  character  with  nicety.  Her 
fine  spacious  person  filled  the  scene. 

The  part  of  Malvolio  has  in  my  judgment  been  so 
often  misunderstood,  and  the  general  merits  of  the 
actor,  who  then  played  it,  so  unduly  appreciated,  that 
I  shall  hope  for  pardon,  if  I  am  a  little  prolix  upon 
these  points. 

Of  all  the  actors  who  flourished  in  my  time  —  a 
melancholy  phrase  if  taken  aright,  reader  —  Bensley 
had  most  of  the  swell  of  soul,  was  greatest  in  the  de- 


ON   SOME   OF  THE   OLD   ACTORS  275 

livery  of  heroic  conceptions,  the  emotions  consequent 
upon  the  presentment  of  a  great  idea  to  the  fancy. 
He  had  the  true  poetical  enthusiasm  —  the  rarest 
faculty  among  players.  None  that  I  remember  pos- 
sessed even  a  portion  of  that  fine  madness  which  he 
threw  out  in  Hotspur's  famous  rant  about  glory,  or 
the  transports  of  the  Venetian  incendiary  at  the  vision 
of  the  fired  city.  His  voice  had  the  dissonance,  and 
at  times  the  inspiriting  effect  of  the  trumpet.  His  gait 
was  uncouth  and  stiff,  but  no  way  embarrassed  by 
affectation ;  and  the  thorough-bred  gentleman  was 
uppermost  in  every  movement.  He  seized  the  moment 
of  passion  with  the  greatest  truth;  like  a  faithful 
clock,  never  striking  before  the  time ;  never  antici- 
pating or  leading  you  to  anticipate.  He  was  totally 
destitute  of  trick  and  artifice.  He  seemed  come  upon 
the  stage  to  do  the  poet's  message  simply,  and  he  did 
it  with  as  genuine  fidelity  as  the  nuncios  in  Homer 
deliver  the  errands  of  the  gods.  He  let  the  passion 
or  the  sentiment  do  its  own  work  without  prop  or 
bolstering.  He  would  have  scorned  to  mountebank 
it ;  and  betrayed  none  of  that  cleverness  which  is  the 
bane  of  serious  acting.  For  this  reason,  his  lago  was 
the  only  endurable  one  which  I  remember  to  have 
seen.  No  spectator  from  his  action  could  divine  more 
of  his  artifice  than  Othello  was  supposed  to  do.  His 
confessions  in  soliloquy  alone  put  you  in  possession  of 
the  mystery.     There  were  no  by- intimations  to  make 


276  ON   SOME   OF  THE   OLD   ACTORS. 

the  audience  fancy  their  own  discernment  so  much 
greater  than  that  of  the  Moor  —  who  commonly  stands 
hke  a  great  helpless  mark  set  up  for  mine  Ancient, 
and  a  quantity  of  barren  spectators,  to  shoot  their 
bolts  at.  The  lago  of  Bensley  did  not  go  to  work  so 
grossly.  There  was  a  triumphant  tone  about  the 
character,  natural  to  a  general  consciousness  of 
power ;  but  none  of  that  petty  vanity  which  chuckles 
and  cannot  contain  itself  upon  any  little  successful 
stroke  of  its  knavery  —  as  is  common  with  your  small 
villains,  and  green  probationers  in  mischief.  It  did 
not  clap  or  crow  before  its  time.  It  was  not  a  man 
setting  his  wits  at  a  child,  and  winking  all  the  while 
at  other  children  who  are  mightily  pleased  at  being 
let  into  the  secret;  but  a  consummate  villain  en- 
trapping a  noble  nature  into  toils,  against  which  no 
discernment  was  available,  where  the  manner  was  as 
fathomless  as  the  purpose  seemed  dark,  and  without 
motive.  The  part  of  Malvolio,  in  the  Twelfth  Night, 
was  performed  by  Bensley,  with  a  richness  and  a 
dignity,  of  which  (to  judge  from  some  recent  castings 
of  that  character)  the  very  tradition  must  be  worn 
out  from  the  stage.  No  manager  in  those  days  would 
have  dreamed  of  giving  it  to  Mr.  Baddeley,  or  Mr. 
Parsons :  when  Bensley  was  occasionally  absent  from 
the  theatre,  John  Kemble  thought  it  no  derogation  to 
succeed  to  the  part.  Malvolio  is  not  essentially  ludi- 
crous.    He  becomes  comic  but  by  accident.     He  is 


ON  SOME  OF  THE  OLD  ACTORS-    277 

cold,  austere,  repelling ;  but  dignified,  consistent,  and, 
for  what  appears,  rather  of  an  over- stretched  morality. 
Maria  describes  him  as  a  sort  of  Puritan;  and  he 
might  have  worn  his  gold  chain  with  honour  in  one 
of  our  old  round-head  families,  in  the  service  of  a 
Lambert,  or  a  Lady  Fairfax.  But  his  morality  and  his 
manners  are  misplaced  in  Illyria.  He  is  opposed  to 
the  proper  levities  of  the  piece,  and  falls  in  the  un- 
equal contest.  Still  his  pride,  or  his  gravity,  (call  it 
which  you  will)  is  inherent,  and  nati\^  to  the  man, 
not  mock  or  affected,  which  latter  only  are  the  fit 
objects  to  excite  laughter.  His  quality  is  at  the  best 
unlovely,  but  neither  buffoon  nor  contemptible.  His 
bearing  is  lofty,  a  little  above  his  station,  but  probably 
not  much  above  his  deserts.  We  see  no  reason  why 
he  should  not  have  been  brave,  honourable,  accom- 
plished. His  careless  committal  of  the  ring  to  the 
ground  (which  he  was  commissioned  to  restore  to 
Cesario),  bespeaks  a  generosity  of  birth  and  feeling. 
His  dialect  on  all  occasions  is  that  of  a  gentleman? 
and  a  man  of  education.  We  must  not  confound  him 
with  the  eternal  old,  low  steward  of  comedy.  He  is 
master  of  the  household  to  a  great  Princess ;  a  dignity 
probably  conferred  upon  him  for  other  respects  than 
age  or  length  of  service.  Olivia,  at  the  first  indication 
of  his  supposed  madness,  declares  that  she  "would 
not  have  him  miscarry  for  half  of  her  dowry."  Does 
this  look  as  if  the  character  was  meant  to  appear  little 


2/8  ON   SOME   OF   THE   OLD   ACTORS. 

or  insignificant?  Once,  indeed,  she  accuses  him  to 
his  face  —  of  what  ?  —  of  being  <'  sick  of  self-love,"  — 
but  with  a  gentleness  and  considerateness  which  could 
not  have  been,  if  she  had  not  thought  that  this  partic- 
ular infirmity  shaded  some  virtues.  His  rebuke  to 
the  knight,  and  his  sottish  revellers,  is  sensible  and 
spirited ;  and  when  we  take  into  consideration  the  un- 
protected condition  of  his  mistress,  and  the  strict 
regard  with  which  her  state  of  real  or  dissembled 
mourning  would  draw  the  eyes  of  the  world  upon  her 
house-affairs,  Malvolio  might  feel  the  honour  of  the 
family  in  some  sort  in  his  keeping ;  as  it  appears  not 
that  Olivia  had  any  more  brothers,  or  kinsmen,  to 
look  to  it  —  for  Sir  Toby  had  dropped  all  such  nice 
respects  at  the  buttery  hatch.  That  Malvolio  was 
meant  to  be  represented  as  possessing  estimable 
qualities,  the  expression  of  the  Duke  in  his  anxiety 
to  have  him  reconciled,  almost  infers.  "  Pursue  him, 
and  entreat  him  to  a  peace."  Even  in  his  abused 
state  of  chains  and  darkness,  a  sort  of  greatness  seems 
never  to  desert  him.  He  argues  highly  and  well  with 
the  supposed  Sir  Topas,  and  philosophises  gallantly 
upon  his  straw*.     There  must  have  been  some  shadow 

*  Clown.  What  is  the  opinion  of  Pythagoras  concerning 
wild  fowl? 

Mai.  That  the  soul  of  our  grandam  might  haply  inhabit  a 
bird. 

Clown.     What  thinkest  thou  of  his  opinion  ? 

Mai.    I  think  nobly  of  the  soul,  and  no  way  approve  of  his 


ON   SOME  OF  THE  OLD  ACTORS.         279 

of  worth  about  the  man ;  he  must  have  been  some- 
thing more  than  a  mere  vapour — a  thing  of  straw,  or 
Jack  in  office  —  before  Fabian  and  Maria  could  have 
ventured  sending  him  upon  a  courting- errand  to 
Olivia.  There  was  some  consonancy  (as  he  would 
say)  in  the  undertaking,  or  the  jest  would  have  been 
too  bold  even  for  that  house  of  misrule. 

Bensley,  accordingly,  threw  over  the  part  an  air  of 
Spanish  loftiness.  He  looked,  spake,  and  moved  like 
an  old  Castilian.  He  was  starch,  spruce,  opinionated, 
but  his  superstructure  of  pride  seemed  bottomed  upon 
a  sense  of  worth.  There  was  something  in  it  beyond 
the  coxcomb.  It  was  big  and  swelling,  but  you  could 
not  be  sure  that  it  was  hollow.  You  might  wish  to 
see  it  taken  down,  but  you  felt  that  it  was  upon  an 
elevation.  He  was  magnificent  from  the  outset ;  but 
when  the  decent  sobrieties  of  the  character  began  to 
give  way,  and  the  poison  of  self-love,  in  his  conceit  of 
the  Countess's  affection,  gradually  to  work,  you  would 
have  thought  that  the  hero  of  La  Mancha  in  person 
stood  before  you.  How  he  went  smiling  to  himself ! 
with  what  ineffable  carelessness  would  he  twirl  his 
gold  chain  !  what  a  dream  it  was  !  you  were  infected 
with  the  illusion,  and  did  not  wish  that  it  should  be 
removed  !  you  had  no  room  for  laughter  !  if  an  un- 
seasonable reflection  of  morality  obtruded  itself,  it 
was  a  deep  sense  of  the  pitiable  infirmity  of  man's 
nature,  that  can  lay  him  open  to  such  frenzies  —  but 


280         ON   SOME  OP  THE  OLD  ACTORS. 

in  truth  you  rather  admired  than  pitied  the  lunacy 
while  it  lasted  —  you  felt  that  an  hour  of  such  mis- 
take was  worth  an  age  with  the  eyes  open.  Who 
would  not  wish  to  live  but  for  a  day  in  the  conceit  of 
such  a  lady's  love  as  Olivia?  Why,  the  Duke  would 
have  given  his  principality  but  for  a  quarter  of  a 
minute,  sleeping  or  waking,  to  have  been  so  deluded. 
The  man  seemed  to  tread  upon  air,  to  taste  manna, 
to  walk  with  his  head  in  the  clouds,  to  mate  Hyperion. 
O  !  shake  not  the  castles  of  his  pride  —  endure  yet 
for  a  season  bright  moments  of  confidence  —  "  stand 
still  ye  watches  of  the  element,"  that  Malvolio  may 
be  still  in  fancy  fair  Olivia's  lord  —  but  fate  and  retri- 
bution say  no  —  I  hear  the  mischievous  titter  of 
Maria  —  the  witty  taunts  of  Sir  Toby  —  the  still  more 
insupportable  triumph  of  the  foolish  knight  —  the 
counterfeit  Sir  Topas  is  unmasked  —  and  "  thus  the 
whirligig  of  time,"  as  the  true  clown  hath  it,  "  brings 
in  his  revenges."  I  confess  that  I  never  saw  the 
catastrophe  of  this  character,  while  Bensley  played  it, 
without  a  kind  of  tragic  interest.  There  was  good 
foolery  too.  Few  now  remember  Dodd.  What  an 
Aguecheek  the  stage  lost  in  him  !  Lovegrove,  who 
came  nearest  to  the  old  actors,  revived  the  character 
some  few  seasons  ago,  and  made  it  sufficiently  gro- 
tesque ;  but  Dodd  was  //,  as  it  came  out  of  nature's 
hands.  It  might  be  said  to  remain  in  puris  natu- 
ralibus.     In  expressing  slowness  of  apprehension  this 


ON   SOME   OF   THE    OLD    ACTORS.        281 

actor  surpassed  all  others.  You  could  see  the  first  dawn 
of  an  idea  stealing  slowly  over  his  countenance,  climb- 
ing up  by  little  and  little,  with  a  painful  process,  till  it 
cleared  up  at  last  to  the  fulness  of  a  twilight  con- 
ception —  its  highest  meridian.  He  seemed  to  keep 
back  his  intellect,  as  some  have  had  the  power  to  re- 
tard their  pulsation.  The  balloon  takes  less  time  in 
filling,  than  it  took  to  cover  the  expansion  of  his  broad 
moony  face  over  all  its  quarters  with  expression.  A 
glimmer  of  understanding  would  appear  in  a  corner 
of  his  eye,  and  for  lack  of  fuel  go  out  again.  A  part 
of  his  forehead  would  catch  a  little  intelligence,  and 
be  a  long  time  in  communicating  it  to  the  remainder. 
I  am  ill  at  dates,  but  I  think  it  is  now  better  than 
five  and  twenty  years  ago  that  walking  in  the  gardens 
of  Gray's  Inn  —  they  were  then  far  finer  than  they 
are  now  —  the  accursed  Verulam  Buildings  had  not 
encroached  upon  all  the  east  side  of  them,  cutting  out 
delicate  green  crankles,  and  shouldering  away  one  of 
two  of  the  stately  alcoves  of  the  terrace  —  the  sur- 
vivor stands  gaping  and  relationless  as  if  it  remem- 
bered its  brother  —  they  are  still  the  best  gardens  of 
any  of  the  Inns  of  Court,  my  beloved  Temple  not 
forgotten  —  have  the  gravest  character,  their  aspect 
being  altogether  reverend  and  law-breathing  —  Bacon 
has  left  the    impress  of  his   foot  upon   their  gravel 

walks taking  my  afternoon  solace  on  a  summer 

day  upon  the  aforesaid  terrace,  a  comely  sad  per- 


282  ON   SOME  OF   THE   OLD  ACTORS. 

sonage  came  towards  me,  whom,  from  his  grave  air 
and  deportment,  I  judged  to  be  one  of  the  old  Benchers 
of  the  Inn.  He  had  a  serious  thoughtful  forehead, 
and  seemed  to  be  in  meditations  of  mortality.  As  I 
have  an  instinctive  awe  of  old  Benchers,  I  was  passing 
him  with  that  sort  of  subindicative  token  of  respect 
which  one  is  apt  to  demonstrate  towards  a  venerable 
stranger,  and  which  rather  denotes  an  inclination  to 
greet  him,  than  any  positive  motion  of  the  body  to 
that  effect  —  a  species  of  humility  and  will-worship 
which  I  observe,  nine  times  out  of  ten,  rather  puzzles 
than  pleases  the  person  it  is  offered  to  —  when  the 
face  turning  full  upon  me  strangely  identified  itself 
with  that  of  Dodd.  Upon  close  inspection  I  was  not 
mistaken.  But  could  this  sad  thoughtful  countenance 
be  the  same  vacant  face  of  folly  which  I  had  hailed 
so  often  under  circumstances  of  gaiety ;  which  I  had 
never  seen  without  a  smile,  or  recognised  but  as  the 
usher  of  mirth ;  that  looked  out  so  formally  flat  in 
Foppington,  so  frothily  pert  in  Tattle,  so  impotently 
busy  in  Backbite ;  so  blankly  divested  of  all  meaning, 
or  resolutely  expressive  of  none,  in  Acres,  in  Fribble, 
and  a  thousand  agreeable  impertinences?  Was  this 
the  face  —  full  of  thought  and  carefulness  —  that  had 
so  often  divested  itself  at  will  of  every  trace  of  either 
to  give  me  diversion,  to  clear  my  cloudy  face  for  two 
or  three  hours  at  least  of  its  furrows  ?  Was  this  the 
face  —  manly,   sober,  intelligent,  —  which   I  had  so 


ON  SOME  OF  THE  OLD  ACTORS.    283 

often  despised,  made  mocks  at,  made  merry  with? 
The  remembrance  of  the  freedoms  which  I  had  taken 
with  it  came  upon  me  with  a  reproach  of  insult.  I 
could  have  asked  it  pardon.  I  thought  it  looked 
upon  me  with  a  sense  of  injury.  There  is  something 
strange  as  well  as  sad  in  seeing  actors  —  your  pleasant 
fellows  particularly  —  subjected  to  and  suffering  the 
common  lot  —  their  fortunes,  their  casualties,  their 
deaths,  seem  to  belong  to  the  scene,  their  actions  to 
be  amenable  to  poetic  justice  only.  We  can  hardly 
connect  them  with  more  awful  responsibilities.  The 
death  of  this  fine  actor  took  place  shortly  after  this 
meeting.  He  had  quitted  the  stage  some  months; 
and,  as  I  learned  afterwards,  had  been  in  the  habit  of 
resorting  daily  to  these  gardens  almost  to  the  day  of 
his  decease.  In  these  serious  walks  probably  he  was 
divesting  himself  of  many  scenic  and  some  real  vani- 
ties —  weaning  himself  from  the  frivolities  of  the 
lesser  and  the  greater  theatre  —  doing  gentle  penance 
for  a  life  of  no  very  reprehensible  fooleries,  —  taking 
off  by  degrees  the  buffoon  mask  which  he  might  feel 
he  had  worn  too  long  —  and  rehearsing  for  a  more 
solemn  cast  of  part.  Dying  he  "  put  on  the  weeds  of 
Dominic*." 

♦  Dodd  was  a  man  of  reading,  and  left  at  his  death  a  choice 
collection  of  old  English  literature.  I  should  judge  him  to 
have  been  a  man  of  wit.  I  know  one  instance  of  an  impromptu 
which  no  length  of  study  could  have  bettered.     My  merry  friend, 


284         ON   SOME   OF  THE  OLD   ACTORS. 

If  few  can  remember  Dodd,  many  yet  living  will 
not  easily  forget  the  pleasant  creature,  who  in  those 
days  enacted  the  part  of  the  Clown  to  Dodd's  Sir 
Andrew.  —  Richard,  or  rather  Dicky  Suett  —  for  so 
in  his  life-time  he  delighted  to  be  called,  and  time 
hath  ratified  the  appellation  —  lieth  buried  on  the  north 
side  of  the  cemetery  of  Holy  Paul,  to  whose  service 
his  nonage  and  tender  years  were  dedicated.  There 
are  who  do  yet  remember  him  at  that  period  —  his 
pipe  clear  and  harmonious.  He  would  often  speak 
of  his  chorister  days,  when  he  was  "  cherub  Dicky." 

What  clipped  his  wings,  or  made  it  expedient  that 
he  should  exchange  the  holy  for  the  profane  state ; 
whether  he  had  lost  his  good  voice  (his  best  recom- 
mendation to  that  office),  Hke  Sir  John,  "with  hal- 
looing and  singing  of  anthems  j  "  or  whether  he  was 
adjudged  to  lack  something,  even  in  those  early  years, 
of  the  gravity  indispensable  to  an  occupation  which 
professeth  to  "  commerce  with  the  skies  "  —  I  could 
never  rightly  learn ;  but  we  find  him,  after  the  pro- 
bation of  a  twelvemonth  or  so,  reverting  to  a  secular 
condition,  and  become  one  of  us. 

Jem  White,  had  seen  him  one  evening  in  Aguecheek,  and  rec- 
ognising Dodd  the  next  day  in  Fleet  Street,  was  irresistibly 
impelled  to  take  off  his  hat  and  salute  him  as  the  identical 
Knight  of  the  preceding  evening  with  a  "  Save  you,  Sir  An- 
drew." Dodd,  not  at  all  disconcerted  at  this  unusual  address 
from  a  stranger,  with  a  courteous  half-rebuking  wave  of  the 
hand,  put  him  off  with  an  "  Away,  Fool," 


ON  SOME  OF  THE  OLD  ACTORS.    285 

I  think  he  was  not  altogether  of  that  timber,  out  of 
which  cathedral  seats  and  sounding  boards  are  hewed. 
But  if  a  glad  heart  —  kind  and  therefore  glad  —  be 
any  part  of  sanctity,  then  might  the  robe  of  Motley, 
with  which  he  invested  himself  with  so  much  humility 
after  his  deprivation,  and  which  he  wore  so  long  with 
so  much  blameless  satisfaction  to  himself  and  to  the 
pubUc,  be  accepted  for  a  surplice  —  his  white  stole, 
and  albe. 

The  first  fruits  of  his  secularization  was  an  en- 
gagement upon  the  boards  of  Old  Drury,  at  which 
theatre  he  commenced,  as  I  have  been  told,  with 
adopting  the  manner  of  Parsons  in  old  men's  charac- 
ters. At  the  period  in  which  most  of  us  knew  him, 
he  was  no  more  an  imitator  than  he  was  in  any  true 
sense  himself  imitable. 

He  was  the  Robin  Good- Fellow  of  the  stage.  He 
came  in  to  trouble  all  things  with  a  welcome  per- 
plexity, himself  no  whit  troubled  for  the  matter.  He 
was  known,  like  Puck,  by  his  note  —  Ha  /  Ha  !  Ha  ! 
—  sometimes  deepening  to  Ho  !  Ho  !  Ho  /  with  an 
irresistible  accession,  derived  perhaps  remotely  from 
his  ecclesiastical  education,  foreign  to  his  prototype 
of,  —  O  La  f  Thousands  of  hearts  yet  respond  to 
the  chuckling  O  La  I  of  Dicky  Suett,  brought  back  to 
their  remembrance  by  the  faithful  transcript  of  his 
friend  Mathews's  mimicry.  The  "  force  of  nature 
could  no  further  go."  He  drolled  upon  the  stock  of 
these  two  syllables  richer  than  the  cuckoo. 


286  ON   SOME   OF  THE   OLD   ACTORS. 

Care,  that  troubles  all  the  world,  was  forgotten  in 
his  composition.  Had  he  had  but  two  grains  (nay, 
half  a  grain)  of  it,  he  could  never  have  supported 
himself  upon  those  two  spider's  strings,  which  served 
him  (in  the  latter  part  of  his  unmixed  existence)  as 
legs.  A  doubt  or  a  scruple  must  have  made  him 
totter,  a  sigh  have  puffed  him  down ;  the  weight  of  a 
frown  had  staggered  him,  a  wrinkle  made  him  lose 
his  balance.  But  on  he  went,  scrambling  upon  those 
airy  stilts  of  his,  with  Robin  Good- Fellow,  "  thorough 
brake,  thorough  briar,"  reckless  of  a  scratched  face  or 
a  torn  doublet. 

Shakspeare  foresaw  him,  when  he  framed  his  fools 
and  jesters.  They  have  all  the  true  Suett  stamp,  a 
loose  and  shambling  gait,  a  slippery  tongue,  this  last 
the  ready  midwife  to  a  without-pain-delivered  jest; 
in  words,  light  as  air,  venting  truths  deep  as  the  cen- 
tre ;  with  idlest  rhymes  tagging  conceit  when  busiest, 
singing  with  Lear  in  the  tempest,  or  Sir  Toby  at  the 
buttery-hatch. 

Jack  Bannister  and  he  had  the  fortune  to  be  more 
of  personal  favourites  with  the  town  than  any  actors 
before  or  after.  The  difference,  I  take  it,  was  this : 
—  Jack  was  more  beloved  for  his  sweet,  good-natured, 
moral  pretensions.  Dicky  was  more  liked  for  his 
sweet,  good-natured,  no  pretensions  at  all.  Your 
whole  conscience  stirred  with  Bannister's  performance 
of  Walter  in  the  Children  in  the  Wood  —  but  Dicky 


ON  SOME  OF  THE  OLD  ACTORS.   28/ 

seemed  like  a  thing,  as  Shakspeare  says  of  Love, 
too  young  to  know  what  conscience  is.  He  put  us 
into  Vesta's  days.  Evil  fled  before  him  —  not  as 
from  Jack,  as  from  an  antagonist,  —  but  because  it 
could  not  touch  him,  any  more  than  a  cannon-ball  a 
fly.  He  was  delivered  from  the  burthen  of  that 
death ;  and,  when  Death  came  himself,  not  in  meta- 
phor, to  fetch  Dicky,  it  is  recorded  of  him  by 
Robert  Palmer,  who  kindly  watched  his  exit,  that  he 
received  the  last  stroke,  neither  varying  his  accustomed 
tranquillity,  nor  tune,  with  the  simple  exclamation, 
worthy  to  have  been  recorded  in  his  epitaph  —  O  La  ! 
O  La  !  Bobby  ! 

The  elder  Palmer  (of  stage-treading  celebrity) 
commonly  played  Sir  Toby  in  those  days ;  but  there 
is  a  solidity  of  wit  in  the  jests  of  that  half-Falstafl* 
which  he  did  not  quite  fill  out.  He  was  as  much  too 
showy  as  Moody  (who  sometimes  took  the  part)  was 
dry  and  sottish.  In  sock  or  buskin  there  was  an  air 
of  swaggering  gentility  about  Jack  Palmer.  He  was  a 
gentleman  with  a  slight  infusion  of  the  footman.  His 
brother  Bob  (of  recenter  memory)  who  was  his  shadow 
in  every  thing  while  he  lived,  and  dwindled  into  less 
than  a  shadow  afterwards  —  was  2^ gentleman  with  a  little 
stronger  infusion  of  the  latter  ingredient;  that  was  all. 
It  is  amazing  how  a  little  of  the  more  or  less  makes  a 
difference  in  these  things.  When  you  saw  Bobby  in 
the  Duke's  Servant*,  you  said,  what  a  pity  such  a 
*  High  Life  Below  Stairs. 


288  ON   SOME   OF  THE  OLD   ACTORS. 

pretty  fellow  was  only  a  servant.  When  you  saw  Jack 
figuring  in  Captain  Absolute,  you  thought  you  could 
trace  his  promotion  to  some  lady  of  quality  who 
fancied  the  handsome  fellow  in  his  top-knot,  and  had 
bought  him  a  commission.  Therefore  Jack  in  Dick 
Amlet  was  insuperable. 

Jack  had  two  voices,  —  both  plausible,  hypocritical, 
and  insinuating;  but  his  secondary  or  supplemental 
voice  still  more  decisively  histrionic  than  his  common 
one.  It  was  reserved  for  the  spectator;  and  the 
dramatis  personae  were  supposed  to  know  nothing  at 
all  about  it.  The  lies  of  young  Wilding,  and  the 
sentiments  in  Joseph  Surface,  were  thus  marked  out 
in  a  sort  of  italics  to  the  audience.  This  secret  cor- 
respondence with  the  company  before  the  curtain 
(which  is  the  bane  and  death  of  tragedy)  has  an  ex- 
tremely happy  effect  in  some  kinds  of  comedy,  in  the 
more  highly  artificial  comedy  of  Congreve  or  of 
Sheridan  especially,  where  the  absolute  sense  of 
reality  (so  indispensable  to  scenes  of  interest)  is  not 
required,  or  would  rather  interfere  to  diminish  your 
pleasure.  The  fact  is,  you  do  not  believe  in  such 
characters  as  Surface  —  the  villain  of  artificial  comedy 
—  even  while  you  read  or  see  them.  If  you  did,  they 
would  shock  and  not  divert  you.  When  Ben,  in 
Love  for  Love,  returns  from  sea,  the  following  ex- 
quisite dialogue  occurs  at  his  first  meeting  with  his 
father  — 


ON  SOME  OF  THE  OLD  ACTORS    289 

Sir  Satnpso7i.  Thou  hast  been  many  a  weary  league, 
Ben,  since  I  saw  thee. 

Ben,  Ey,  ey,  been !  Been  far  enough,  an  that  be  all. 
—  Well,  father,  and  how  do  all  at  home  ?  how  does 
brother  Dick,  and  brother  Val  ? 

Sir  Sa?npson.  Dick  !  body  o'  me,  Dick  has  been  dead 
these  two  years.  I  writ  you  word  when  you  were  at 
Leghorn. 

Ben.  Mess,  that 's  true  ;  Marry,  I  had  forgot.  Dick 's 
dead  as  you  say  —  Well,  and  how  ?  —  I  have  a  many 
questions  to  ask  you  — 

Here  is  an  instance  of  insensibility  which  in  real 
life  would  be  revolting,  or  rather  in  real  life  could 
not  have  co- existed  with  the  warm-hearted  tempera- 
ment of  the  character.  But  when  you  read  it  in  the 
spirit  with  which  such  playful  selections  and  specious 
combinations  rather  than  strict  mefaphrases  of  nature 
should  be  taken,  or  when  you  saw  Bannister  play  it, 
it  neither  did,  nor  does  wound  the  moral  sense  at 
all.  For  what  is  Ben  —  the  pleasant  sailor  which 
Bannister  gives  us  —  but  a  piece  of  satire  —  a  crea- 
tion of  Congreve's  fancy  —  a  dreamy  combination 
of  all  the  accidents  of  a  sailor's  character  —  his  con- 
tempt of  money  —  his  credulity  to  women  —  with 
that  necessary  estrangement  from  home  which  it  is 
just  within  the  verge  of  credibility  to  suppose  might 
produce  such  an  hallucination  as  is  here  described. 
We  never  think  the  worse  of  Ben  for  it,  or  feel  it  as 
a  stain  upon  his  character.  But  when  an  actor 
19 


290  ON  SOME  OF  THE  OLD  ACTORS. 

comes,  and  instead  of  the  delightful  phantom  —  the 
creature  dear  to  half-belief — which  Bannister  ex- 
hibited —  displays  before  our  eyes  a  downright  con- 
cretion of  a  Wapping  sailor  —  a  jolly  warm-hearted 
Jack  Tar  —  and  nothing  else  —  when  instead  of  in- 
vesting it  with  a  delicious  confusedness  of  the  head, 
and  a  veering  undirected  goodness  of  purpose  —  he 
gives  to  it  a  downright  daylight  understanding,  and 
a  full  consciousness  of  its  actions ;  thrusting  forward 
the  sensibilities  of  the  character  with  a  pretence  as  if 
it  stood  upon  nothing  else,  and  was  to  be  judged 
by  them  alone  —  we  feel  the  discord  of  the  thing ;  the 
scene  is  disturbed ;  a  real  man  has  got  in  among 
the  dramatis  personse,  and  puts  them  out.  We  want 
the  sailor  turned  out.  We  feel  that  his  true  place  is 
not  behind  the  curtain  but  in  the  first  or  second 
gallery. 


ON   THE   ARTIFICIAL   COMEDY  OF 
THE  LAST  CENTURY. 


The  artificial  Comedy,  or  Comedy  of  manners,  is 
quite  extinct  on  our  stage.  Congreve  and  Farquhar 
show  their  heads  once  in  seven  years  only,  to  be 
exploded  and  put  down  instantly.  The  times  can- 
not bear  them.  Is  it  for  a  few  wild  speeches,  an 
occasional  license  of  dialogue?  I  think  not  alto- 
gether. The  business  of  their  dramatic  characters 
will  not  stand  the  moral  test.  We  screw  every  thing 
up  to  that.  Idle  gallantry  in  a  fiction,  a  dream,  the 
passing  pageant  of  an  evening,  startles  us  in  the 
same  way  as  the  alarming  indications  of  profligacy  in 
a  son  or  ward  in  real  Ufe  should  startle  a  parent  or 
guardian.  We  have  no  such  middle  emotions  as 
dramatic  interests  left.  We  see  a  stage  libertine 
playing  his  loose  pranks  of  two  hours'  duration,  and 
of  no  after  consequence,  with  the  severe  eyes  which 
inspect  real  vices  with  their  bearings  upon  two  worlds. 
We  are  spectators  to  a  plot  or  intrigue  (not  reducible 
in  life  to  the  point  of  strict  morality)  and  take  it  all 


292  ON   THE   ARTIFICIAL  COMEDY 

for  truth.  We  substitute  a  real  for  a  dramatic  per- 
son, and  judge  him  accordingly.  We  try  him  in  our 
courts,  from  which  there  is  no  appeal  to  the  dramatis 
personcBj  his  peers.  We  have  been  spoiled  with  — 
not  sentimental  comedy  —  but  a  tyrant  far  more 
pernicious  to  our  pleasures  which  has  succeeded  to 
it,  the  exclusive  and  all  devouring  drama  of  common 
life;  where  the  moral  point  is  every  thing;  where, 
instead  of  the  fictitious  half-believed  personages  of 
the  stage  (the  phantoms  of  old  comedy)  we  recog- 
nise ourselves,  our  brothers,  aunts,  kinsfolk,  allies, 
patrons,  enemies,  —  the  same  as  in  life,  —  with  an 
interest  in  what  is  going  on  so  hearty  and  substantial, 
that  we  cannot  afford  our  moral  judgment,  in  its 
deepest  and  most  vital  results,  to  compromise  or 
slumber  for  a  moment.  What  is  there  transacting, 
by  no  modification  is  made  to  affect  us  in  any  other 
manner  than  the  same  events  or  characters  would  do 
in  our  relationships  of  life.  We  carry  our  fire-side 
concerns  to  the  theatre  with  us.  We  do  not  go 
thither,  like  our  ancestors,  to  escape  from  the  pres- 
sure of  reality,  so  much  as  to  confirm  our  experience 
of  it ;  to  make  assurance  double,  and  take  a  bond  of 
fate.  We  must  live  our  toilsome  lives  twice  over, 
as  it  was  the  mournful  privilege  of  Ulysses  to  de- 
scend twice  to  the  shades.  All  that  neutral  ground 
of  character,  which  stood  between  vice  and  virtue ; 
or  which  in  fact   was  indifferent   to  neither,  where 


OF  THE  LAST  CENTURY.  293 

neither  properly  was  called  in  question ;  that  happy 
breathing-place  from  the  burthen  of  a  perpetual 
moral  questioning  —  the  sanctuary  and  quiet  Alsatia 
of  hunted  casuistry  —  is  broken  up  and  disfranchised, 
as  injurious  to  the  interests  of  society.  The  privi- 
leges of  the  place  are  taken  away  by  law.  We  dare 
not  dally  with  images,  or  names,  of  wrong.  We  bark 
like  foolish  dogs  at  shadows.  We  dread  infection 
from  the  scenic  representation  of  disorder ;  and  fear 
a  painted  pustule.  In  our  anxiety  that  our  morality 
should  not  take  cold,  we  wrap  it  up  in  a  great  blanket 
surtout  of  precaution  against  the  breeze  and  sunshine. 
I  confess  for  myself  that  (with  no  great  delinquen- 
cies to  answer  for)  I  am  glad  for  a  season  to  take  an 
airing  beyond  the  diocese  of  the  strict  conscience, — 
not  to  live  always  in  the  precincts  of  the  law-courts, 
—  but  now  and  then,  for  a  dream- while  or  so,  to  im- 
agine a  world  with  no  meddling  restrictions  —  to  get 
into  recesses,  whither  the  hunter  cannot  follow  me  — 


Secret  shades 


Of  woody  Ida's  inmost  grove, 

While  yet  there  was  no  fear  of  Jove  — 

I  come  back  to  my  cage  and  my  restraint  the  fresher 
and  more  healthy  for  it.  I  wear  my  shackles  more 
contentedly  for  having  respired  the  breath  of  an 
imaginary  freedom.  I  do  not  know  how  it  is  with 
others,  but  I  feel  the  better  always  for  the  perusal  of 
one  of  Congreve's  —  nay,  why  should  I  not  add  even 


294  ON   THE   ARTIFICIAL   COMEDO 

of  Wycherley's  —  comedies.  I  am  the  gayer  at  least 
for  it ;  and  I  could  never  connect  those  sports  of  a 
witty  fancy  in  any  shape  with  any  result  to  be  drawn 
from  them  to  imitation  in  real  life.  They  are  a 
world  of  themselves  almost  as  much  as  fairyland. 
Take  one  of  their  characters,  male  or  female  (with 
few  exceptions  they  are  alike),  and  place  it  in  a 
modern  play,  and  my  virtuous  indignation  shall  rise 
against  the  profligate  wretch  as  warmly  as  the  Gates 
of  the  pit  could  desire ;  because  in  a  modern  play 
I  am  to  judge  of  the  right  and  the  wrong.  The 
standard  of  police  is  the  measure  of  political  jus- 
tice. The  atmosphere  will  blight  it,  it  cannot  live 
here.  It  has  got  into  a  moral  world,  where  it  has 
no  business,  from  which  it  must  needs  fall  headlong ; 
as  dizzy,  and  incapable  of  making  a  stand,  as  a 
Swedenborgian  bad  spirit  that  has  wandered  una- 
wares into  the  sphere  of  one  of  his  Good  Men,  or 
Angels.  But  in  its  own  world  do  we  feel  the  crea- 
ture is  so  very  bad?  —  The  Fainalls  and  the  Mira- 
bels, the  Dorimants  and  the  Lady  Touchwoods,  in 
their  own  sphere,  do  not  offend  my  moral  sense ;  in 
fact  they  do  not  appeal  to  it  at  all.  They  seem 
engaged  in  their  proper  element.  They  break 
through  no  laws,  or  conscientious  restraints.  They 
know  of  none.  They  have  got  out  of  Christendom 
into  the  land  —  what  shall  I  call  it  ?  —  of  cuckoldry 
—  the  Utopia  of  gallantry,  where  pleasure  is  duty, 


OF  THE  LAST  CENTURY.  295 

and  the  manners  perfect  freedom.  It  is  altogether 
a  speculative  scene  of  things,  which  has  no  reference 
whatever  to  the  world  that  is.  No  good  person  can 
be  justly  offended  as  a  spectator,  because  no  good 
person  suffers  on  the  stage.  Judged  morally,  every 
character  in  these  plays  —  the  few  exceptions  only 
are  mistakes  —  is  alike  essentially  vain  and  worthless. 
The  great  art  of  Congreve  is  especially  shown  in 
this,  that  he  has  entirely  excluded  from  his  scenes, 
—  some  little  generosities  in  the  part  of  Angelica 
perhaps  excepted,  —  not  only  any  thing  like  a  fault- 
less character,  but  any  pretensions  to  goodness  or 
good  feelings  whatsoever.  Whether  he  did  this  de- 
signedly, or  instinctively,  the  effect  is  as  happy,  as 
the  design  (if  design)  was  bold.  I  used  to  wonder 
at  the  strange  power  which  his  Way  of  the  World 
in  particular  possesses  of  interesting  you  all  along  in 
the  pursuits  of  characters,  for  whom  you  absolutely 
care  nothing  —  for  you  neither  hate  nor  love  his 
personages  —  and  I  think  it  is  owing  to  this  very 
indifference  for  any,  that  you  endure  the  whole.  He 
has  spread  a  privation  of  moral  light,  I  will  call  it, 
rather  than  by  the  ugly  name  of  palpable  darkness, 
over  his  creations;  and  his  shadows  flit  before  you 
without  distinction  or  preference.  Had  he  intro- 
duced a  good  character,  a  single  gush  of  moral  feel- 
ing, a  revulsion  of  the  judgment  to  actual  life  and 
actual  duties,  the  impertinent  Goshen  would  have  only 


296  ON  THE  ARTIFICIAL  COMEDY 

lighted  to  the  discovery  of  deformities,  which  now 
are  none,  because  we  think  them  none. 

Translated  into  real  life,  the  characters  of  his,  and 
his  friend  Wycherley's  dramas,  are  profligates  and 
strumpets,  —  the  business  of  their  brief  existence, 
the  undivided  pursuit  of  lawless  gallantry.  No  other 
spring  of  action,  or  possible  motive  of  conduct,  is 
recognised ;  principles  which,  universally  acted  upon, 
must  reduce  this  frame  of  things  to  a  chaos.  But 
we  do  them  wrong  in  so  translating  them.  No  such 
effects  are  produced  in  their  world.  When  we  are 
among  them,  we  are  amongst  a  chaotic  people.  We 
are  not  to  judge  them  by  our  usages.  No  reverend 
institutions  are  insulted  by  their  proceedings,  —  for 
they  have  none  among  them.  No  peace  of  families 
is  violated,  —  for  no  family  ties  exist  among  them. 
No  purity  of  the  marriage  bed  is  stained,  —  for 
none  is  supposed  to  have  a  being.  No  deep  affec- 
tions are  disquieted,  —  no  holy  wedlock  bands  are 
snapped  asunder,  —  for  affection's  depth  and  wedded 
faith  are  not  of  the  growth  of  that  soil.  There  is 
neither  right  nor  wrong,  —  gratitude  or  its  opposite, 
—  claim  or  duty,  —  paternity  or  sonship.  Of  what 
consequence  is  it  to  virtue,  or  how  is  she  at  all  con- 
cerned about  it,  whether  Sir  Simon,  or  Dapperwit, 
steal  away  Miss  Martha;  or  who  is  the  father  of 
Lord  Froth's,  or  Sir  Paul  Pliant's  children. 

The  whole  is  a  passing  pageant,  where  we  should 


OF  THE  LAST  CENTURY.  297 

sit  as  unconcerned  at  the  issues,  for  life  or  death, 
as  at  a  battle  of  the  frogs  and  mice.  But,  like  Don 
Quixote,  we  take  part  against  the  puppets,  and  quite 
as  impertinently.  We  dare  not  contemplate  an  At- 
lantis, a  scheme,  out  of  which  our  coxcombical  moral 
sense  is  for  a  little  transitory  ease  excluded.  We 
have  not  the  courage  to  imagine  a  state  of  things 
for  which  there  is  neither  reward  nor  punishment. 
We  cling  to  the  painful  necessities  of  shame  and 
blame.     We  would  indict  our  very  dreams. 

Amidst  the  mortifying  circumstances  attendant 
upon  growing  old,  it  is  something  fo  have  seen  the 
School  for  Scandal  in  its  glory.  This  comedy  grew 
out  of  Congreve  and  Wycherley,  but  gathered  some 
allays  of  the  sentimental  comedy  which  followed 
theirs.  It  is  impossible  that  it  should  be  now  actedy 
though  it  continues,  at  long  intervals,  to  be  an- 
nounced in  the  bills.  Its  hero,  when  Palmer  played 
it  at  least,  was  Joseph  Surface.  When  I  remember 
the  gay  boldness,  the  graceful  solemn  plausibility,  the 
measured  step,  the  insinuating  voice  —  to  express  it 
in  a  word  —  the  downright  acted  villany  of  the  part, 
so  different  from  the  pressure  of  conscious  actual 
wickedness,  —  the  hypocritical  assumption  of  hypoc- 
risy,—  which  made  Jack  so  deservedly  a  favourite 
in  that  character,  I  must  needs  conclude  the  present 
generation  of  play-goers  more  virtuous  than  myself, 
or   more   dense.     I  freely   confess  that   he  divided 


298  ON   THE  ARTIFICIAL  COMEDY 

the  palm  with  me  with  his  better  brother;  that,  in 
fact,  I  Uked  him  quite  as  well.  Not  but  ther^  are 
passages,  —  like  that,  for  instance,  where  Joseph  is 
made  to  refuse  a  pittance  to  a  poor  relation,  —  in- 
congruities which  Sheridan  was  forced  upon  by  the 
attempt  to  join  the  artificial  with  the  sentimental 
comedy,  either  of  which  must  destroy  the  other  — 
but  over  these  obstructions  Jack's  manner  floated 
him  so  lightly,  that  a  refusal  from  him  no  more 
shocked  you,  than  the  easy  compliance  of  Charles 
gave  you  in  reality  any  pleasure;  you  got  over  the 
paltry  question  as  quickly  as  you  could,  to  get  back 
into  the  regions  of  pure  comedy,  where  no  cold 
moral  reigns.  The  highly  artificial  manner  of  Palmer 
in  this  character  counteracted  every  disagreeable  im- 
pression which  you  might  have  received  from  the 
contrast,  supposing  them  real,  between  the  two 
brothers.  You  did  not  believe  in  Joseph  with  the 
same  faith  with  which  you  believed  in  Charles.  The 
latter  was  a  pleasant  reality,  the  former  a  no  less 
pleasant  poetical  foil  to  it.  The  comedy,  I  have 
said,  is  incongruous;  a  mixture  of  Congreve  with 
sentimental  incompatibilities :  the  gayety  upon  the 
whole  is  buoyant;  but  it  required  the  consummate 
art  of  Palmer  to  reconcile  the  discordant  elements. 

A  player  with  Jack's  talents,  if  we  had  one  now, 
would  not  dare  to  do  the  part  in  the  same  manner. 
He  would  instinctively  avoid  every  turn  which  might 


OF  THE  LAST  CENTURY.  299 

tend  to  unrealise,  and  so  to  make  the  character  fas- 
cinating. He  must  take  his  cue  from  his  spectators, 
who  would  expect  a  bad  man  and  a  good  man  as 
rigidly  opposed  to  each  other  as  the  death-beds  of 
those  geniuses  are  contrasted  in  the  prints,  which  I 
am  sorry  to  say  have  disappeared  from  the  windows 
of  my  old  friend  Carrington  Bowles,  of  St.  Paul's 
Church-yard  memory  —  (an  exhibition  as  venerable 
as  the  adjacent  cathedral,  and  almost  coeval)  of  the 
bad  and  good  man  at  the  hour  of  death ;  where  the 
ghastly  apprehensions  of  the  former,  —  and  truly 
the  grim  phantom  with  his  reality  of  a  toasting  fork  is 
not  to  be  despised,  —  so  finely  contrast  with  the 
meek  complacent  kissing  of  the  rod,  —  taking  it  in 
like  honey  and  butter,  —  with  which  the  latter  sub" 
mits  to  the  scythe  of  the  gentle  bleeder.  Time,  who 
wields  his  lancet  with  the  apprehensive  finger  of  a 
popular  young  ladies'  surgeon.  What  flesh,  like 
loving  grass,  would  not  covet  to  meet  half-way  the 
stroke  of  such  a  delicate  mower?  —  John  Palmer 
was  twice  an  actor  in  this  exquisite  part.  He  was 
playing  to  you  all  the  while  that  he  was  playing  upon 
Sir  Peter  and  his  lady.  You  had  the  first  intimation 
of  a  sentiment  before  it  was  on  his  hps.  His  altered 
voice  was  meant  to  you,  and  you  were  to  suppose 
that  his  fictitious  co-flutterers  on  the  stage  perceived 
nothing  at  all  of  it.  What  was  it  to  you  if  that  half- 
reahty,  the   husband,  was  over-reached   by  the  pup- 


300  ON  THE  ARTIFICIAL  COMEDY 

petry  —  or  the  thin  thing  (Lady  Teazle's  reputation) 
was  persuaded  it  was  dying  of  a  plethory?  The 
fortunes  of  Othello  and  Desdemona  were  not  con- 
cerned in  it.  Poor  Jack  has  past  from  the  stage  in 
good  time,  that  he  did  not  live  to  this  our  age  oi 
seriousness.  The  pleasant  old  Teazle  King^  too,  is 
gone  in  good  time.  His  manner  would  scarce  have 
past  current  in  our  day.  We  must  love  or  hate  — 
acquit  or  condemn  —  censure  or  pity — exert  our 
detestable  coxcombry  of  moral  judgment  upon  every 
thing.  Joseph  Surface,  to  go  down  now,  must  be  a 
downright  revolting  villain  —  no  compromise  —  his 
first  appearance  must  shock  and  give  horror  —  his 
specious  plausibilities,  which  the  pleasurable  faculties 
of  our  fathers  welcomed  with  such  hearty  greetings, 
knowing  that  no  harm  (dramatic  harm  even)  could 
come,  or  was  meant  to  come  of  them,  must  inspire 
a  cold  and  killing  aversion.  Charles  (the  real  cant- 
ing person  of  the  scene  —  for  the  hypocrisy  of  Joseph 
has  its  ulterior  legitimate  ends,  but  his  brother's  pro- 
fessions of  a  good  heart  centre  in  downright  self- 
satisfaction)  must  be  loved^  and  Joseph  hated.  To 
balance  one  disagreeable  reality  with  another,  Sir 
Peter  Teazle  must  be  no  longer  the  comic  idea  of  a 
fretful  old  bachelor  bridegroom,  whose  teasings 
(while  King  acted  it)  were  evidently  as  much 
played  oif  at  you,  as  they  were  meant  to  concern  any 
body  on  the  stage,  —  he  must  be  a  real  person,  ca- 


N 


OF  THE  LAST   CENTURY.  3OI 

pable  in  law  of  sustaining  an  injury  —  a  person 
towards  whom  duties  are  to  be  acknowledged  —  the 
genuine  crim-con  antagonist  of  the  villanous  seducer 
Joseph.  To  realise  him  more,  his  suflferings  under 
his  unfortunate  match  must  have  the  downright  pun- 
gency of  life  —  must  (or  should)  make  you  not 
mirthful  but  uncomfortable,  just  as  the  same  pre- 
dicament would  move  you  in  a  neighbour  or  old 
friend.  The  delicious  scenes  which  give  the  play 
its  name  and  zest,  must  affect  you  in  the  same  se- 
rious manner  as  if  you  heard  the  reputation  of  a 
dear  female  friend  attacked  in  your  real  presence. 
Crabtree,  and  Sir  Benjamin  —  those  poor  snakes  that 
live  but  in  the  sunshine  of  your  mirth  —  must  be 
ripened  by  this  hot-bed  process  of  realization  into 
asps  or  amphisbaenas ;  and  Mrs.  Candour  —  O  ! 
frightful !  become  a  hooded  serpent.  Oh  who  that 
remembers  Parsons  and  Dodd — the  wasp  and  butter- 
fly of  the  School  for  Scandal  —  in  those  two  char- 
acters ;  and  charming  natural  Miss  Pope,  the  per- 
fect gentlewoman  as  distinguished  from  the  fine  lady 
of  comedy,  in  this  latter  part — would  forego  the 
true  scenic  delight  —  the  escape  from  life  —  the  ob- 
livion of  consequences  —  the  holiday  barring  out  of 
the  pedant  Reflection  —  those  Saturnalia  of  two  or 
three  brief  hours,  well  won  from  the  world  —  to  sit 
instead  at  one  of  our  modern  plays  —  to  have  his 
coward  conscience  (that  forsooth  must  not  be  left  for 


302  ON   THE   ARTIFICIAL   COMEDY 

a  moment)  stimulated  with  perpetual  appeals  —  dulled 
rather,  and  blunted,  as  a  faculty  without  repose  must 
be  —  and  his  moral  vanity  pampered  with  images  of 
notional  justice,  notional  beneficence,  lives  saved 
without  the  spectators'  risk,  and  fortunes  given  away 
that  cost  the  author  nothing? 

No  piece  was,  perhaps,  ever  so  completely  cast  in 
all  its  parts  as  this  manager's  comedy.  Miss  Farren 
had  succeeded  to  Mrs.  Abingdon  in  Lady  Teazle; 
and  Smith,  the  original  Charles,  had  retired,  when 
I  first  saw  it.  The  rest  of  the  characters,  with  very 
slight  exceptions,  remained.  I  remember  it  was 
then  the  fashion  to  cry  down  John  Kemble,  who 
took  the  part  of  Charles  after  Smith  j  but,  I  thought, 
very  unjustly.  Smith,  I  fancy,  was  more  airy,  and 
took  the  eye  with  a  certain  gaiety  of  person.  He 
brought  with  him  no  sombre  recollections  of  tragedy. 
He  had  not  to  expiate  the  fault  of  having  pleased 
beforehand  in  lofty  declamation.  He  had  no  sins 
of  Hamlet  or  of  Richard  to  atone  for.  His  failure 
in  these  parts  was  a  passport  to  success  in  one  of  so 
opposite  a  tendency.  But,  as  far  as  I  could  judge, 
the  weighty  sense  of  Kemble  made  up  for  more  per- 
sonal incapacity  than  he  had  to  answer  for.  His 
harshest  tones  in  this  part  came  steeped  and  dulci- 
fied in  good  humour.  He  made  his  defects  a  grace. 
His  exact  declamatory  manner,  as  he  managed  it, 
only  served  to  convey  the  points  of  his  dialogue  with 


OF  THE   LAST  CENTURY.  303 

more  precision.     It   seemed   to  head  the  shafts  to 
carry  them  deeper.     Not  one  of  his  sparkUng  sen- 
tences was  lost.     I  remember  minutely  how  he  de- 
livered each  in  succession,  and  cannot  by  any  effort 
imagine  how  any  of  them  could  be  altered  for  the 
better.     No  man  could  deliver  brilliant  dialogue  — 
the  dialogue  of  Congreve  or  of  Wycherley  — .because 
none  understood  it  —  half  so  well  as  John  Kemble. 
His  Valentine,  in  Love  for  Love,  was,  to  my  recol- 
lection, faultless.     He  flagged  sometimes  in  the  in- 
tervals of  tragic  passion.     He  would   slumber  over 
the  level   parts  of   an  heroic  character.     His   Mac- 
beth has  been  known  to  nod.     But  he  always  seemed 
to  me  to  be  particularly  alive  to  pointed  and  witty 
dialogue.     The  relaxing  levities  of  tragedy  have  not 
been  touched  by  any  since  him  —  the  playful  court- 
bred  spirit  in  which  he  condescended  to  the  players 
in  Hamlet  —  the  sportive  relief  which  he  threw  into 
the   darker   shades   of   Richard  —  disappeared   with 
him.     He  had  his  sluggish  moods,  his  torpors  —  but 
they  were   the  halting- stones  and   resting-places   of 
his   tragedy  —  poHtic    savings,   and    fetches    of    the 
breath  —  husbandry    of    the    lungs,    where    nature 
pointed   him  to  be  an  economist  —  rather,  I  think, 
than  errors  of  the  judgment.     They  were,  at  worst, 
less  painful   than  the  eternal   tormenting   unappeas- 
able vigilance,  the  "  lidless  dragon  eyes,"  of  present 
fashionable  tragedy. 


ON  THE  ACTING   OF   MUNDEN. 


Not  many  nights  ago  I  had  come  home  from  seeing 
this  extraordinary  performer  in  Cockletop ;  and  when 
I  retired  to  my  pillow,  his  whimsical  image  still  stuck 
by  me,  in  a  manner  as  to  threaten  sleep.  In  vain  I 
tried  to  divest  myself  of  it,  by  conjuring  up  the  most 
opposite  associations.  I  resolved  to  be  serious.  I 
raised  up  the  gravest  topics  of  life;  private  misery, 
public  calamity.     All  would  not  do. 


There  the  antic  sate 


Mocking  our  state  — 

his  queer  visnomy  —  his  bewildering  costume  —  all 
the  strange  things  which  he  had  raked  together  — 
his  serpentine  rod,  swagging  about  in  his  pocket  — 
Cleopatra's  tear,  and  the  rest  of  his  relics  —  O'Keefe's 
wild  farce,  and  his  wilder  commentary  —  till  the 
passion  of  laughter,  Hke  grief  in  excess,  relieved  itself 
by  its  own  weight,  inviting  the  sleep  which  in  the 
first  instance  it  had  driven  away. 


ON   THE  ACTING   OF  MUNDEN.  30$ 

But  I  was  not  to  escape  so  easily.  No  sooner  did 
I  fall  into  slumbers,  than  the  same  image,  only  more 
perplexing,  assailed  me  in  the  shape  of  dreams.  Not 
one  Munden,  but  five  hundred,  were  dancing  before 
me,  like  the  faces  which,  whether  you  will  or  no, 
come  when  you  have  been  taking  opium  —  all  the 
strange  combinations,  which  this  strangest  of  all  strange 
mortals  ever  shot  his  proper  countenance  into,  from 
the  day  he  came  commissioned  to  dry  up  the  tears  of 
the  town  for  the  loss  of  the  now  almost  forgotten 
Edwin.  O  for  the  power  of  the  pencil  to  have  fixed 
them  when  I  awoke  !  A  season  or  two  since  there 
was  exhibited  a  Hogarth  gallery.  I  do  not  see  why 
there  should  not  be  a  Munden  gallery.  In  richness 
and  variety  the  latter  would  not  fall  far  short  of  the 
former. 

There  is  one  face  of  Farley,  one  face  of  Knight, 
one  (but  what  a  one  it  is  !)  of  Listen ;  but  Munden 
has  none  that  you  can  properly  pin  down,  and  call 
his.  When  you  think  he  has  exhausted  his  battery  of 
looks,  in  unaccountable  warfare  with  your  gravity, 
suddenly  he  sprouts  out  an  entirely  new  set  of  features, 
like  Hydra.  He  is  not  one,  but  legion.  Not  so 
much  a  comedian,  as  a  company.  If  his  name  could 
be  multiplied  like  his  countenance,  it  might  fill  a  play- 
bill. He,  and  he  alone,  literally  makes  faces  :  applied 
to  any  other  person,  the  phrase  is  a  mere  figure,  de- 
noting certain  modifications   of  the   human  counte- 


•306  ON    THE   ACTING   OF   MUNDEN. 

nance.  Out  of  some  invisible  wardrobe  he  dips  for 
faces,  as  his  friend  Suett  used  for  wigs,  and  fetches 
them  out  as  easily.  I  should  not  be  surprised  to  see 
him  some  day  put  out  the  head  of  a  river  horse ;  or 
come  forth  a  pewitt,  or  lapwing,  some  feathered  meta- 
morphosis. 

I  have  seen  this  gifted  actor  in  Sir  Christopher 
Curry  —  in  Old  Dornton  —  diffuse  a  glow  of  senti- 
ment which  has  made  the  pulse  of  a  crowded  theatre 
beat  like  that  of  one  man ;  when  he  has  come  in  aid 
of  the  pulpit,  doing  good  to  the  moral  heart  of  a 
people.  I  have  seen  some  faint  approaches  to  this 
sort  of  excellence  in  other  players.  But  in  the  grand 
grotesque  of  farce,  Munden  stands  out  as  single  and 
unaccompanied  as  Hogarth.  Hogarth,  strange  to  tell, 
had  no  followers.  The  school  of  Munden  began,  and 
must  end  with  himself. 

Can  any  man  wonder^  like  him  ?  can  any  man  see 
ghosts^  like  him  ?  or  fight  with  his  own  shadow  — 
"sessa"  —  as  he  does  in  that  strangely-neglected 
thing,  the  Cobbler  of  Preston  —  where  his  alternations 
from  the  Cobbler  to  the  Magnifico,  and  from  the 
Magnifico  to  the  Cobbler,  keep  the  brain  of  the  spec- 
tator in  as  wild  a  ferment,  as  if  some  Arabian  Night 
were  being  acted  before  him.  Who  like  him  can 
throw,  or  ever  attempted  to  throw,  a  preternatural  in- 
terest over  the  commonest  daily- life  objects?  A  table, 
pr  a  joint  stool,  in  his  conception,  rises  into  a  dignity 


ON   THE    ACTING    OF    MUNDEN.  307 

equivalent  to  Cassiopeia's  chair.  It  is  invested  with 
constellatory  importance.  You  could  not  speak  of  it 
with  more  deference,  if  it  were  mounted  into  the 
firmament.  A  beggar  in  the  hands  of  Michael  An- 
gelo,  says  Fuseli,  rose  the  Patriarch  of  Poverty.  So 
the  gusto  of  Munden  antiquates  and  ennobles  what  it 
touches.  His  pots  and  his  ladles  are  as  grand  and 
primal  as  the  seething-pots  and  hooks  seen  in  old 
prophetic  vision.  A  tub  of  butter,  contemplated  by 
him,  amounts  to  a  Platonic  idea.  He  understands  a 
leg  of  mutton  in  its  quiddity.  He  stands  wondering, 
amid  the  common-place  materials  of  life,  like  primaeval 
man  with  the  sun  and  stars  about  him. 


THS    END. 


THE   LAST  ESSAYS   OF  ELIA. 


PREFACE. 

BY  A  FRIEND   OF  THE  LATE  ELIA. 


This  poor  gentleman,  who  for  some  months  past  had 
been  in  a  declining  way,  hath  at  length  paid  his  final 
tribute  to  nature. 

To  say  truth,  it  is  time  he  were  gone.  The  humour 
of  the  thing,  if  there  was  ever  much  in  it,  was  pretty 
well  exhausted  ;  and  a  two  years'  and  a  half  existence 
has  been  a  tolerable  duration  for  a  phantom. 

I  am  now  at  liberty  to  confess,  that  much  which  I 
have  heard  objected  to  my  late  friend's  writings  was 
well-founded.  Crude  they  are,  I  grant  you  —  a  sort  of 
unlicked,  incondite  things  —  villainously  pranked  in  an 
affected  array  of  antique  modes  and  phrases.  They  had 
not  been  his,  if  they  had  been  other  than  such ;  and 
better  it  is,  that  a  writer  should  be  natural  in  a  self- 
pleasing  quaintness,  than  to  affect  a  naturalness  (so 
called)  that  should  be  strange  to  him.  Egotistical  they 
have  been  pronounced  by  some  who  did  not  know,  that 
what  he  tells  us,  as  of  himself,  was  often  true  only  (his- 
torically) of  another ;  as  in  a  former  Essay  (to  save 
many  instances)  —  where  under  the  first  person  (his 
favourite  figure)  he  shadows  forth  the  forlorn  estate  of  a 


IV  PREFACE. 

country-boy  placed  at  a  London  school,  far  from  his 
friends  and  connections  —  in  direct  opposition  to  his 
own  early  history.  If  it  be  egotism  to  imply  and  twine 
with  his  own  identity  the  griefs  and  affections  of  an- 
other—  making  himself  many,  or  reducing  many  unto 
himself — then  is  the  skilful  novelist,  who  all  along 
brings  in  his  hero,  or  heroine,  speaking  of  themselves, 
the  greatest  egotist  of  all ;  who  yet  has  never,  there- 
fore, been  accused  of  that  narrowness.  And  how  shall 
the  intenser  dramatist  escape  being  faulty,  who  doubt- 
less, under  cover  of  passion  uttered  by  another,  often- 
times gives  blameless  vent  to  his  most  inward  feelings, 
and  expresses  his  own  story  modestly? 

My  late  friend  was  in  many  respects  a  singular  char- 
acter. Those  who  did  not  like  him,  hated  him ;  and 
some,  who  once  liked  him,  afterwards  became  his 
bitterest  haters.  The  truth  is,  he  gave  himself  too  little 
concern  what  he  uttered,  and  in  whose  presence.  He 
observed  neither  time  nor  place,  and  would  e*en  out 
with  what  came  uppermost.  With  the  severe  religion- 
ist he  would  pass  for  a  free-thinker ;  while  the  other 
faction  set  him  down  for  a  bigot,  or  persuaded  them- 
selves that  he  belied  his  sentiments.  Few  understood 
him ;  and  I  am  not  certain  that  at  all  times  he  quite 
understood  himself.  He  too  much  affected  that  danger- 
ous figure  —  irony.  He  sowed  doubtful  speeches,  and 
reaped  plain,  unequivocal  hatred.  —  He  would  interrupt 
the  gravest  discussion  with  some  light  jest ;  and  yet,  per- 
haps, not  quite  irrelevant  in  ears  that  could  understand 
it.  Your  long  and  much  talkers  hated  him.  The  in- 
formal habit  of  his  mind,  joined  to  an  inveterate  im- 


PREFACE.  V 

pediment  of  speech,  forbade  him  to  be  an  orator ; 
and  he  seemed  determined  that  no  one  else  should 
play  that  part  when  he  was  present.  He  was  petit  and 
ordinary  in  his  person  and  appearance.  I  have  seen 
him  sometimes  in  what  is  called  good  company,  but 
where  he  has  been  a  stranger,  sit  silent,  and  be  suspected 
for  an  odd  fellow ;  till  some  unlucky  occasion  provok- 
ing it,  he  would  stutter  out  some  senseless  pun  (not  alto- 
gether senseless  perhaps,  if  rightly  taken),  which  has 
stamped  his  character  for  the  evening.  It  was  hit  or 
miss  with  him  ;  but  nine  times  out  of  ten,  he  con- 
trived by  this  device  to  send  away  a  whole  company 
his  enemies.  His  conceptions  rose  kindlier  than  his 
utterance,  and  his  happiest  impromptus  had  the  ap- 
pearance of  effort.  He  has  been  accused  of  trying  to 
be  witty,  when  in  truth  he  was  but  struggling  to  give  his 
poor  thoughts  articulation.  He  chose  his  companions 
for  some  individuality  of  character  which  they  mani- 
fested. —  Hence,  not  many  persons  of  science,  and 
few  professed  literati^  were  of  his  councils.  They  were, 
for  the  most  part,  persons  of  an  uncertain  fortune ; 
and,  as  to  such  people  commonly  nothing  is  more  ob- 
noxious than  a  gentleman  of  settled  (though  moderate) 
income,  he  passed  with  most  of  them  for  a  great  miser. 
To  my  knowledge  this  was  a  mistake.  His  intimados, 
to  confess  a  truth,  were  in  the  world's  eye  a  ragged 
regiment.  He  found  them  floating  on  the  surface  of 
society ;  and  the  colour,  or  something  else,  in  the 
weed  pleased  him.  The  burrs  stuck  to  him  —  but 
they  were  good  and  loving  burrs  for  all  that.  He 
never  greatly  cared  for  the  society  of  what  are  called 


VI  PREFACE. 

good  people.  If  any  of  these  were  scandalised  (and 
offences  were  sure  to  arise),  he  could  not  help  it. 
When  he  has  been  remonstrated  with  for  not  making 
more  concessions  to  the  feelings  of  good  people,  he 
would  retort  by  asking,  what  one  point  did  these  good 
people  ever  concede  to  him?  He  was  temperate  in 
his  meals  and  diversions,  but  always  kept  a  little  on 
this  side  of  abstemiousness.  Only  in  the  use  of  the 
Indian  weed  he  might  be  thought  a  little  excessive. 
He  took  it,  he  would  say,  as  a  solvent  of  speech. 
Marry  —  as  the  friendly  vapour  ascended,  how  his 
prattle  would  curl  up  sometimes  with  it !  the  ligaments, 
which  tongue-tied  him,  were  loosened,  and  the  stam- 
merer proceeded  a  statist ! 

I  do  not  know  whether  I  ought  to  bemoan  or  rejoice 
that  my  old  friend  is  departed.  His  jests  were  begin- 
ning to  grow  obsolete,  and  his  stories  to  be  found  out. 
He  felt  the  approaches  of  age ;  and  while  he  pre- 
tended to  cling  to  life,  you  saw  how  slender  were  the 
ties  left  to  bind  him.  Discoursing  with  him  latterly  on 
this  subject,  he  expressed  himself  with  a  pettishness, 
which  I  thought  unworthy  of  him.  In  our  walks  about 
his  suburban  retreat  (as  he  called  it)  at  Shacklewell, 
some  children  belonging  to  a  school  of  industry  had 
met  us,  and  bowed  and  curtseyed,  as  he  thought,  in  an 
especial  manner  to  him.  "  They  take  me  for  a  visiting 
governor,"  he  muttered  earnestly.  He  had  a  horror, 
which  he  carried  to  a  foible,  of  looking  like  anything 
important  and  parochial.  He  thought  that  he  ap- 
proached nearer  to  that  stamp  daily.  He  had  a 
general  aversion  from  being  treated  like  a  grave  or 


PREFACE.  Til 

respectable  character,  and  kept  a  weary  eye  upon  the 
advances  of  age  that  should  so  entitie  him.  He 
herded  always,  while  it  was  possible,  with  people 
younger  than  himself.  He  did  not  conform  to  the 
march  of  time,  but  was  dragged  along  in  the  proces- 
sion. His  manners  lagged  behind  his  years.  He  was 
too  much  of  the  boy-man.  The  toga  virilis  never 
sate  gracefully  on  his  shoulders.  The  impressions  of 
infancy  had  burnt  into  him,  and  he  resented  the 
impertinence  of  manhood.  These  were  weaknesses; 
but  such  as  they  were,  they  are  a  key  to  explicate 
some  of  his  writings. 


CONTENTS. 


Page 

Preface iii 

BlAKESMOOR   in    H SHIRE I 

Poor  Relations 9 

Stage  Illusion 20 

To  THE  Shade  of  Elliston 26 

Ellistoniana 30 

Detached  Thoughts  on  Books  and  Reading   .    .  39 

The  Old  Margate  Hoy 49 

The  Convalescent 62 

Sanity  of  True  Genius 69 

Captain  Jackson 75 

The  Superannuated  Man 82 

The  Genteel  Style  in  Writing 94 

Barbara  S 102 

The  Tombs  in  the  Abbey iii 

Amicus  Redivivus 116 

Some  Sonnets  of  Sir  Philip  Sydney 124 

Newspapers  Thirty-five  Years  Ago 137 

Barrenness  of  the  Imaginative  Faculty  in  the 

Productions  of  Modern  Art 149 

Rejoicings  upon  the  New  Year's  Coming  of  Age  167 

The  Wedding 176 


X  CONTENTS. 

Pack 

The  Child  Angel i86 

A  Death-bed 191 

Old  China »    .    .  194 

Popular  Fallacies  — 

I.    That  a  Bully  is  always  a  Coward  .•»...  204 

II.    That  Ill-gotten  Gain  never  Prospers       ....  205 

III.  That  a  Man  must  not  Laugh  at  his  own  Jest.      .  206 

IV.  That  such  a  one  shows  his  Breeding.  —  That  it 

is  easy  to  perceive  he  is  no  Gentleman    .     .     .  207 

V.    That  the  Poor  copy  the  Vices  of  the  Rich  .     .     .  208 

VI.    That  Enough  is  as  good  as  a  Feast 211 

VII.    Of  two  Disputants,  the  Warmest  is  generally  in 

the  Wrong 212 

VIII.    That  Verbal  Allusions  are  not  Wit,  because  they 

will  not  bear  Translation 214 

IX.    That  the  Worst  Puns  are  the  Best 215 

X.    That  Handsome  Is  that  Handsome  Does   .     .     .  218 

XI.    That  we  must  not  Look  a  Gift-horse  in  the  Mouth  222 

XII.    That  Home  is  Home  though  it  is  never  so  Homely  225 

XIII.  That  you  must  Love  me,  and  Love  my  Dog    .     .  232 

XIV.  That  we  should  Rise  with  the  Lark 238 

XV.    That  we  should  Lie  Down  with  the  Lamb  ...  241 

XVI.    That  a  Sulky  Temper  is  a  Misfortune    ....  244 


BLAKESMOOR  IN   H SHIRE. 


I  DO  not  know  a  pleasure  more  affecting  than  to 
range  at  will  over  the  deserted  apartments  of  some 
fine  old  family  mansion.  The  traces  of  extinct  gran- 
deur admit  of  a  better  passion  than  envy :  and  con- 
templations on  the  great  and  good,  whom  we  fancy 
in  succession  to  have  been  its  inhabitants,  weave  for 
us  illusions,  incompatible  with  the  bustle  of  modem 
occupancy,  and  vanities  of  foolish  present  aristocracy. 
The  same  difference  of  feeling,  I  think,  attends  us  be- 
tween entering  an  empty  and  a  crowded  church.  In 
the  latter  it  is  chance  but  some  present  human  frailty 

—  an  act  of  inattention  on  the  part  of  some  of  the 
auditory  —  or  a  trait  of  affectation,  or  worse,  vain- 
glory, on  that  of  the  preacher  —  puts  us  by  our  best 
thoughts,  disharmonising  the  place  and  the  occasion. 
But  would'st  thou  know  the  beauty  of  holiness?  —  go 
alone  on  some  week-day,  borrowing  the  keys  of  good 
Master  Sexton,  traverse  the  cool  aisles  of  some  coun- 
try church  :  think  of  the  piety  that  has  kneeled  there 

—  the  congregations,  old  and  young,  that  have  found 


2  BLAKESMOOR  IN   H SHIRE. 

consolation  there  —  the  meek  pastor  —  the  docile 
parishioner.  With  no  disturbing  emotions,  no  cross 
conflicting  comparisons,  drink  in  the  tranquillity  of 
the  place,  till  thou  thyself  become  as  fixed  and  motion- 
less as  the  marble  effigies  that  kneel  and  weep  around 
thee. 

Journeying  northward  lately,  I  could  not  resist  going 
some  few  mile?  out  of  my  road  to  look  upon  the  re- 
mains of  an  old  great  house  with  which  I  had  been 
impressed  in  this  way  in  infancy.  I  was  apprised 
that  the  owner  of  it  had  lately  pulled  it  down ;  still  I 
had  a  vague  notion  that  it  could  not  all  have  perished, 
that  so  much  solidity  with  magnificence  could  not 
have  been  crushed  all  at  once  into  the  mere  dust  and 
rubbish  which  I  found  it. 

The  work  of  ruin  had  proceeded  with  a  swift  hand 
indeed,  and  the  demolition  of  a  few  weeks  had  re- 
duced it  to  —  an  antiquity. 

I  was  astonished  at  the  indistinction  of  everything. 
Where  had  stood  the  great  gates?  What  bounded 
the  court-yard  ?  Whereabout  did  the  out-houses  com- 
mence? a  few  bricks  only  lay  as  representatives  of 
that  which  was  so  stately  and  so  spacious. 

Death  does  not  shrink  up  his  human  victim  at  this 
rate.  The  burnt  ashes  of  a  man  weigh  more  in  their 
proportion. 

Had  I  seen  these  brick-and-mortar  knaves  at  their 
process  of  destruction,  at  the  plucking  of  every  pannel 


BLAKESMOOR  IN   H SHIRE.  3 

I  should  have  felt  the  varletG  at  my  heart.  I  should 
have  cried  out  to  them  to  spare  a  plank  at  least  out  of 
the  cheerful  store-room,  in  whose  hot  window-seat  I 
used  to  sit  and  read  Cowley,  with  the  grass-plat  be- 
fore, and  the  hum  and  flappings  of  that  one  solitary 
wasp  that  ever  haunted  it  about  me  —  it  ia  in  mine 
ears  now,  as  oft  as  summer  returns ;  or  a  pannel  of 
the  yellow  room. 

Why,  every  plank  and  pannel  of  that  house  for  me 
had  magic  in  it.  The  tapestried  bed- rooms  —  tap- 
estry so  much  better  than  painting  —  not  adorning 
merely,  but  peopling  the  wainscots  —  at  which  child- 
hood ever  and  anon  would  steal  a  look,  shifting  its 
coverlid  (replaced  as  quickly)  to  exercise  its  tender 
courage  in  a  momentary  eye- encounter  with  those 
stern  bright  visages,  staring  reciprocally  —  all  Ovid  on 
the  walls,  in  colours  vivider  than  his  descriptions. 
Actaeon  in  mid  sprout,  with  the  unappeasable  prudery 
of  Diana ;  and  the  still  more  provoking,  and  almost 
culinary  coolness  of  Dan  Phoebus,  eel-fashion,  delib- 
erately divesting  of  Marsyas. 

Then,  that  haunted  room  —  in  which  old  Mrs. 
Battle  died  —  whereinto  I  have  crept,  but  always  in 
the  day-time,  with  a  passion  of  fear ;  and  a  sneaking 
curiosity,  terror-tainted,  to  hold  communication  with 
the  past.  —  How  shall  they  build  it  up  again  ? 

It  was  an  old  deserted  place,  yet  not  so  long  de- 
serted but  that  traces  of  the  splendour  of  past  immates 


4  BLAKESMOOR  IN   H SHIRE. 

were  everywhere  apparent.  Its  furniture  was  still 
standing  —  even  to  the  tarnished  gilt  leather  battle- 
dores, and  crumbling  feathers  of  shuttlecocks  in  the 
nursery,  which  told  that  children  had  once  played 
there.  But  I  was  a  lonely  child,  and  had  the  range 
at  will  of  every  apartment,  knew  every  nook  and 
corner,  wondered  and  worshipped  everywhere. 

The  solitude  of  childhood  is  not  so  much  the 
mother  of  thought,  as  it  is  the  feeder  of  love,  and 
silence,  and  admiration.  So  strange  a  passion  for  the 
place  possessed  me  in  those  years,  that,  though  there 
lay  —  I  shame  to  say  how  few  roods  distant  from  the 
mansion  —  half  hid  by  trees,  what  I  judged  some 
romantic  lake,  such  was  the  spell  which  bound  me  to 
the  house,  and  such  my  carefulness  not  to  pass  its 
strict  and  proper  precincts,  that  the  idle  waters  lay 
unexplored  for  me ;  and  not  till  late  in  life,  curiosity 
prevailing  over  elder  devotion,  I  found,  to  my  aston- 
ishment, a  pretty  brawling  brook  had  been  the  Lacus 
Incognitus  of  my  infancy.  Variegated  views,  exten- 
sive prospects  —  and  those  at  no  great  distance  from 
the  house  —  I  was  told  of  such  —  what  were  they  to 
me,  being  out  of  the  boundaries  of  my  Eden  ?  —  So 
far  from  a  wish  to  roam,  I  would  have  drawn,  me- 
thought,  still  closer  the  fences  of  my  chosen  prison  ; 
and  have  been  hemmed  in  by  a  yet  securer  cincture 
of  those  excluding  garden  walls.  I  could  have  ex- 
claimed with  that  garden-loving  poet  — 


BLAKESMOOR   IN  H SHIRE.  5 

Bind  me,  ye  woodbines,  in  your  twines; 
Curl  me  about,  ye  gadding  vines; 
And  oh  so  close  your  circles  lace, 
That  I  may  never  leave  this  place ; 
But,  lest  your  fetters  prove  too  weak, 
Ere  I  your  silken  bondage  break. 
Do  you,  O  brambles,  chain  me  too, 
And,  courteous  briars,  nail  me  through. 

I  was  here  as  in  a  lonely  temple.  Snug  firesides  — 
the  low-built  roof —  parlours  ten  feet  by  ten  —  frugal 
boards,  and  all  the  homeliness  of  home  —  these  were 
the  condition  of  my  birth  —  the  wholesome  soil  which 
I  was  planted  in.  Yet,  without  impeachment  to  their 
tenderest  lessons,  I  am  not  sorry  to  have  had  glances 
of  something  beyond ;  and  to  have  taken,  if  but  a 
peep,  in  childhood,  at  the  contrasting  accidents  of  a 
great  fortune. 

To  have  the  feeling  of  gentility,  it  is  not  necessary 
to  have  been  bom  gentle.  The  pride  of  ancestry 
may  be  had  on  cheaper  terms  than  to  be  obliged  to 
an  importunate  race  of  ancestors;  and  the  coatless 
antiquary  in  his  unemblazoned  cell,  revolving  the  long 
line  of  a  Mowbray's  or  De  Clifford's  pedigree,  at  those 
sounding  names  may  warm  himself  into  as  gay  a  vanity 
as  those  who  do  inherit  them.  The  claims  of  birth 
are  ideal  merely,  and  what  herald  shall  go  about  to 
strip  me  of  an  idea  ?  Is  it  trenchant  to  their  swords  ? 
can  it  be  hacked  off  as  a  spur  can  ?  or  torn  away  like 
a  tarnished  garter? 


6  BLAKESMOOR   IN   H SHIRE. 

What,  else,  were  the  famihes  of  the  great  to  us? 
what  pleasure  should  we  take  in  their  tedious  gene- 
alogies, or  their  capitulatory  brass  monuments  ?  What 
to  us  the  uninterrupted  current  of  their  bloods,  if  our 
own  did  not  answer  within  us  to  a  cognate  and  cor- 
respondent elevation? 

Or  wherefore,  else,  O  tattered  and  diminished 
'Scutcheon  that  hung  upon  the  time-worn  walls  of  thy 
princely  stairs,  Blakesmoor  !  have  I  in  childhood  so 
oft  stood  poring  upon  thy  mystic  characters  —  thy 
emblematic  supporters,  with  their  prophetic  "  Re- 
surgam  "  — till,  every  dreg  of  peasantry  purging  off,  I 
received  into  myself  Very  Gentility  ?  Thou  wert  first 
in  my  morning  eyes ;  and  of  nights,  hast  detained  my 
steps  from  bed  ward,  till  it  was  but  a  step  from  gazing 
at  thee  to  dreaming  on  thee. 

This  is  the  only  true  gentry  by  adoption ;  the  veri- 
table change  of  blood,  and  not,  as  empirics  have 
fabled,  by  transfusion. 

Who  it  was  by  dying  that  had  earned  the  splendid 
trophy,  I  know  not,  I  inquired  not;  but  its  fading 
rags,  and  colours  cobweb- stained,  told  that  its  subject 
was  of  two  centuries  back. 

And  what  if  my  ancestor  at  that  date  was  some 
Damoetas  —  feeding  flocks,  not  his  own,  upon  the 
hills  of  Lincoln  —  did  I  in  less  earnest  vindicate  to 
myself  the  family  trappings  of  this  once  proud  ^gon?. 
—  repaymg  by  a  backward   triumph  the   insults  he 


BLAKESMOOR   IN   H SHIRE.  7 

might  possibly  have  heaped  in  his  life-time  upon  my 
poor  pastoral  progenitor. 

If  it  were  presumption  so  to  speculate,  the  present 
owners  of  the  mansion  had  least  reason  to  complain. 
They  had  long  forsaken  the  old  house  of  their  fathers 
for  a  newer  trifle ;  and  I  was  left  to  appropriate  to 
myself  what  images  I  could  pick  up,  to  raise  my 
fancy,  or  to  soothe  my  vanity. 

I  was  the  true  descendant  of  those  old  W s ; 

and  not  the  present  family  of  that  name,  who  had 
fled  the  old  waste  places. 

Mine  was  that  gallery  of  good  old  family  portraits, 
which  as  I  have  gone  over,  giving  them  in  fancy  my 
own  family  name,  one  —  and  then  another  —  would 
seem  to  smile,  reaching  forward  from  the  canvas,  to 
recognise  the  new  relationship ;  while  the  rest  looked 
grave,  as  it  seemed,  at  the  vacancy  in  their  dwelling, 
and  thoughts  of  fled  posterity. 

That  Beauty  with  the  cool  blue  pastoral  drapery, 
and  a  lamb  —  that  hung  next  the  great  bay  window 

—  with  the  bright  yellow  H shire  hair,  and  eye  of 

watchet  hue  —  so  like  my  Alice  !  —  I  am  persuaded 
she  was  a  true  Elia  —  Mildred  Elia,  I  take  it. 

Mine  too,  Blakesmoor,  was  thy  noble  Marble  Hall, 
with  its  mosaic  pavements,  and  its  Twelve  Caesars  — 
stately  busts  in  marble  —  ranged  round :  of  whose 
countenances,  young  reader  of  faces  as  I  was,  the 
frowning  beauty  of  Nero,  I  remember,  had  most  of 


8  BLAKESMOOR   IN    H SHIRE. 

my  wonder ;  but  the  mild  Galba  had  my  love.  There 
they  stood  m  the  coldness  of  death,  yet  freshness  of 
immortality. 

Mine  too,  thy  lofty  Justice  Hall,  with  its  one  chair 
of  authority,  high-backed  and  wickered,  once  the 
terror  of  luckless  poacher,  or  self- forgetful  maiden  — 
so  common  since,  that  bats  have  roosted  in  it. 

Mine  too  —  whose  else  ?  —  thy  costly  fruit-garden, 
with  its  sun-baked  southern  wall ;  the  ampler  pleasure- 
garden,  rising  backwards  from  the  house  in  triple  ter- 
races, with  flower-pots  now  of  palest  lead,  save  that  a 
speck  here  and  there,  saved  from  the  elements,  be- 
spake  their  pristine  state  to  have  been  gilt  and  ght- 
tering;  the  verdant  quarters  back  warder  still;  and, 
stretching  still  beyond,  in  old  formality,  thy  firry 
wilderness,  the  haunt  of  the  squirrel,  and  the  day- 
long murmuring  woodpigeon,  with  that  antique  image 
in  the  centre,  God  or  Goddess  I  wist  not ;  but  child 
of  Athens  or  old  Rome  paid  never  a  sincerer  worship 
to  Pan  or  to  Sylvanus  in  their  native  groves,  than  I  to 
that  fragmental  mystery. 

Was  it  for  this,  that  I  kissed  my  childish  hands  too 
fervently  in  your  idol  worship,  walks  and  windings  of 
Blakesmoor  !  for  this,  or  what  sin  of  mine,  has  the 
plough  passed  over  your  pleasant  places?  I  some- 
times think  that  as  men,  when  they  die,  do  not  die 
all,  so  of  their  extinguished  habitations  there  may  be 
a  hope  —  a  germ  to  be  revivified. 


POOR   RELATIONS. 


A  Poor  Relation  —  is  the  most  irrelevant  thing  in 
nature,  —  a  piece  of  impertinent  correspondency,  — 
an  odious  approximation,  —  a  haunting  conscience, 
—  a  preposterous  shadow,  lengthening  in  the  noon- 
tide of  your  prosperity,  —  an  unwelcome  remem- 
brancer, —  a  perpetually  recurring  mortification,  —  a 
drain  on  your  purse,  —  a  more  intolerable  dun  upon 
your  pride,  —  a  drawback  upon  success,  —  a  rebuke 
to  your  rising,  —  a  stain  in  your  blood,  —  a  blot  on 
your  scutcheon,  —  a  rent  in  your  garment,  —  a  death's 
head  at  your  banquet,  —  Agathocles'  pot,  —  a  Mor- 
decai  in  your  gate,  —  a  Lazarus  at  your  door,  —  a 
lion  in  your  path,  —  a  frog  in  your  chamber,  —  a  fly 
in  your  ointment,  —  a  mote  in  your  eye,  —  a  triumph 
to  your  enemy,  an  apology  to  your  friends,  —  the  one 
thing  not  needful,  —  the  hail  in  harvest,  —  the  ounce 
of  sour  in  a  pound  of  sweet. 

He  is  known  by  his  knock.     Your  heart  telleth  you 

"That  is  Mr. ."     A  rap,  between  familiarity  and 

respect ;  that  demands,  and,  at  the  same  time,  seems 


lO  POOR   RELATIONS.       - 

to  despair  of,  entertainment.  He  entereth  smiling, 
and  —  embarrassed.  He  holdeth  out  his  hand  to  you 
to  shake,  and  —  draweth  it  back  again.  He  casually 
looketh  in  about  dinner  time  —  when  the  table  is  full. 
He  offereth  to  go  away,  seeing  you  have  company  — 
but  is  induced  to  stay.  He  filleth  a  chair,  and  your 
visitor's  two  children  are  accommodated  at  a  side 
table.  He  never  cometh  upon  open  days,  when  your 
wife  says  with  some  complacency,  "  My  dear,  perhaps 

Mr. will  drop    in  to-day."      He    remembereth 

birth-days  —  and  professeth  he  is  fortunate  to  have 
stumbled  upon  one.  He  declareth  against  fish,  the 
turbot  being  small  —  yet  suffereth  himself  to  be  im- 
portuned into  a  sHce  against  his  first  resolution.  He 
sticketh  by  the  port  —  yet  will  be  prevailed  upon  to 
empty  the  remainder  glass  of  claret,  if  a  stranger  press 
it  upon  him.  He  is  a  puzzle  to  the  servants,  who  are 
fearful  of  being  too  obsequious,  or  not  civil  enough, 
to  him.  The  guests  think  "  they  have  seen  him  be- 
fore." Every  one  speculateth  upon  his  condition; 
and  the  most  part  take  him  to  be  —  a  tide-waiter. 
He  calleth  you  by  your  Christian  name,  to  imply  that 
his  other  is  the  same  with  your  own.  He  is  too  fa- 
miliar by  half,  yet  you  wish  he  had  less  diffidence. 
With  half  the  familiarity  he  might  pass  for  a  casual 
dependent;  with  more  boldness  he  would  be  in  no 
danger  of  being  taken  for  what  he  is.  He  is  too 
humble  for  a  friend,  yet  taketh  on  him  more  state 


POOR  RELATIONS.  II 

than  befits  a  client.  He  is  a  worse  guest  than  a 
country  tenant,  inasmuch  as  he  bringeth  up  no  rent 
—  yet  'tis  odds,  from  his  garb  and  demeanour,  that 
your  guests  take  him  for  one.  He  is  asked  to  make 
one  at  the  whist  table;  refuseth  on  the  score  of 
poverty,  and  —  resents  being  left  out.  When  the 
company  break  up,  he  proffereth  to  go  for  a  coach  — 
and  lets  the  servant  go.  He  recollects  yoar  grand- 
father ;  and  will  thrust  in  some  mean,  and  quite  unim- 
portant anecdote  of —  the  family.  He  knew  it  when 
it  was  not  quite  so  flourishing  as  "  he  is  blest  in  see- 
ing it  now."  He  reviveth  past  situations,  to  institute 
what  he  calleth  —  favourable  comparisons.  With  a 
reflecting  sort  of  congratulation,  he  will  inquire  the 
price  of  your  furniture ;  and  insults  you  with  a  special 
commendation  of  your  window-curtains.  He  is  of 
opinion  that  the  urn  is  the  more  elegant  shape,  but, 
after  all,  there  was  something  more  comfortable  about 
the  old  tea-kettle  —  which  you  must  remember.  He 
dare  say  you  must  find  a  great  convenience  in  having 
a  carriage  of  your  own,  and  appealeth  to  your  lady  if 
it  is  not  so.  Inquireth  if  you  have  had  your  arms 
done  on  vellum  yet ;  and  did  not  know  till  lately, 
that  such-and-such  had  been  the  crest  of  the  family. 
His  memory  is  unseasonable  ;  his  compHments  per- 
verse ;  his  talk  a  trouble ;  his  stay  pertinacious ;  and 
when  he  goeth  away,  you  dismiss  his  chair  into  a 
comer,  as  precipitately  as  possible,  and  feel  fairly  rid 
of  two  nuisances. 


12  POOR  RELATIONS. 

There  is  a  worse  evil  under  the  sun,  and  that  is  — 
a  female  Poor  Relation.  You  may  do  something  with 
the  other ;  you  may  pass  him  off  tolerably  well ;  but 
your  indigent  she-relative  is  hopeless.  "  He  is  an 
old  humourist,"  you  may  say,  "and  affects  to  go 
threadbare.  His  circumstances  are  better  than  folks 
would  take  them  to  be.  You  are  fond  of  having  a 
Character  at  your  table,  and  truly  he  is  one."  But  in 
the  indications  of  female  poverty  there  can  be  no  dis- 
guise. No  woman  dresses  below  herself  from  caprice. 
The  truth  must  out  without  shuffling.     "  She  is  plainly 

related  to  the   L s ;  or  what  does  she  at   their 

house?  "  She  is,  in  all  probability,  your  wife's  cousin. 
Nine  times  oiit  of  ten,  at  least,  this  is  the  case.  Her 
garb  is  something  between  a  gentlewoman  and  a 
beggar,  yet  the  former  evidently  predominates.  She 
is  most  provokingly  humble,  and  ostentatiously  sen- 
sible to  her  inferiority.  He  may  require  to  be  re- 
pressed sometimes  —  aliquando  sufflaminandus  erat 
—  but  there  is  no  raising  her.  You  send  her  soup  at 
dinner,  and  she  begs  to  be  helped  —  after  the  gentle- 
men.    Mr. requests  the  honour  of  taking  wine 

with  her ;  she  hesitates  between  Port  and  Madeira, 
and  chooses  the  former  —  because  he  does.  She  calls 
the  servant  Sir ;  and  insists  on  not  troubling  him  to 
hold  her  plate.  The  housekeeper  patronizes  her.  The 
children's  governess  takes  upon  her  to  correct  her 
when  she  has  mistaken  the  piano  for  a  harpsichord. 


POOR   RELATIONS.  13 

Richard  Amlet,  Esq.,  in  the  play,  is  a  notable  in- 
stance of  the  disadvantages,  to  which  this  chimerical 
notion  of  affinity  constituting  a  claiin  to  acquaintance^ 
may  subject  the  spirit  of  a  gentleman.  A  little  foolish 
blood  is  all  that  is  betwixt  him  and  a  lady  with  a  great 
estate.  His  stars  are  perpetually  crossed  by  the  ma- 
lignant maternity  of  an  old  woman,  who  persists  in 
calling  him  "  her  son  Dick."  But  she  has  wherewithal 
in  the  end  to  recompense  his  indignities,  and  float 
him  again  upon  the  brilliant  surface,  under  which  it 
had  been  her  seeming  business  and  pleasure  all  along 
to  sink  him.  All  men,  besides,  are  not  of  Dick's  tem- 
perament.    I  knew  an  Amlet  in  real  life,  who,  wanting 

Dick's  buoyancy,  sank  indeed.     Poor  W was  of 

my  own  standing  at  Christ's,  a  fine  classic,  and  a  youth 
of  promise.  If  he  had  a  blemish,  it  was  too  much 
pride  ;  but  its  quality  was  inoffensive ;  it  was  not  of 
that  sort  which  hardens  the  heart,  and  serves  to  keep 
inferiors  at  a  distance ;  it  only  sought  to  ward  off 
derogation  from  itself.  It  was  the  principle  of  self- 
respect  carried  as  far  as  it  could  go,  without  infring- 
ing upon  that  respect,  which  he  w^ould  have  every  one 
else  equally  maintain  for  himself.  He  would  have 
you  to  think  alike  with  him  on  this  topic.  Many  a 
quarrel  have  I  had  with  him,  when  we  were  rather 
older  boys,  and  our  tallness  made  us  more  obnoxious 
to  observation  in  the  blue  clothes,  because  I  would 
not  thread  the  alleys  and  blind  ways  of  the  town  with 


14  POOR   RELATIONS. 

him  to  elude  notice,  when  we  have  been  out  together 
on  a  hoHday  in  the  streets  of  this  sneering  and  prying 

metropoUs.     W •  went,  sore  with  these  notions,  to 

Oxford,  where  the  dignity  and  sweetness  of  a  scholar's 
life,  meeting  with  the  alloy  of  a  humble  introduction, 
wrought  in  him  a  passionate  devotion  to  the  place, 
with  a  profound  aversion  from  the  society.  The  ser- 
vitor's gown  (worse  than  his  school  array)  clung  to 
him  with  Nessian  venom.  He  thought  himself  ridic- 
ulous in  a  garb,  under  which  Latimer  must  have 
walked  erect ;  and  in  which  Hooker,  in  his  young 
days,  possibly  flaunted  in  a  vein  of  no  discommend- 
able vanity.  In  the  depth  of  college  shades,  or  in 
his  lonely  chamber,  the  poor  student  shrunk  from  ob- 
servation. He  found  shelter  among  books,  which 
insult  not ;  and  studies,  that  ask  no  questions  of  a 
youth's  finances.  He  was  lord  of  his  Ubrary,  and  sel- 
dom cared  for  looking  out  beyond  his  domains.  The 
healing  influence  of  studious  pursuits  was  upon  him, 
to  soothe  and  to  abstract.  He  was  almost  a  healthy 
man ;  when  the  waywardness  of  his  fate  broke  out 
against  him  with  a  second  and  worse  malignity.     The 

father  of  W had  hitherto  exercised  the  humble 

profession  of  house-painter  at  N ,  near  Oxford. 

A  supposed  interest  with  some  of  the  heads  of  col- 
leges had  now  induced  him  to  take  up  his  abode  in 
that  city,  with  the  hope  of  being  employed  upon  some 
public  works  which  were  talked  of.     From  that  mo 


POOR   RELATIONS.  I  5 

ment  I  read  in  the  countenance  of  the  young  man, 
the  determination  which  at  length  tore  him  from 
academical  pursuits  for  ever.  To  a  person  unac- 
quainted with  our  Universities,  the  distance  between 
the  gownsmen  and  the  townsmen,  as  they  are  called  — 
the  trading  part  of  the  latter  especially — is  carried 
to  an  excess  that  would  appear  harsh  and  incredible. 

The  temperament  of  W 's  father  was  diametrically 

the  reverse  of  his  own.     Old  W was  a  little,  busy, 

cringing  tradesman,  who,  with  his  son  upon  his  arm, 
would  stand  bowing  and  scraping,  cap  in  hand,  to 
any  thing  that  wore  the  semblance  of  a  gown  — insen- 
sible to  the  winks  and  opener  remonstrances  of  the 
young  man,  to  whose  chamber-fellow,  or  equal  in 
standing,  perhaps,  he  was  thus  obsequiously  and  gra- 
tuitously ducking.     Such  a  state  of  things  could  not 

last.     W must  change  the  air  of  Oxford  or  be 

suffocated.  He  chose  the  former ;  and  let  the  sturdy 
moralist,  who  strains  the  point  of  the  filial  duties  as 
high  as  they  can  bear,  censure  the  dereliction;  he 

cannot  estimate  the  struggle.     I  stood  with  W , 

the  last  afternoon  I  ever  saw  him,  under  the  eaves  of 
his  paternal  dwelling.  It  was  in  the  fine  lane  leading 
from  the  High-street  to  the  back  of  *  *  *  *  *  college, 
where  W kept  his  rooms.  He  seemed  thought- 
ful, and  more  reconciled.  I  ventured  to  rally  him  — 
finding  him  in  a  better  mood  —  upon  a  representation 
of  the  Artist  Evangelist,  which  the  old  man,  whose 


l6  POOR   RELATIONS. 

affairs  were  beginning  to  flourish,  had  caused  to  be 
set  up  in  a  splendid  sort  of  frame  over  his  really  hand- 
some shop,  either  as  a  token  of  prosperity,  or  badge 

of  gratitude  to  his  saint.     W looked  up  at  the 

Luke,  and,  like  Satan,  "  knew  his  mounted  sign  —  and 
fled."  A  letter  on  his  father's  table  the  next  morning, 
announced  that  he  had  accepted  a  commission  in  a 
regiment  about  to  embark  for  Portugal.  He  was 
among  the  first  who  perished  before  the  walls  of  St. 
Sebastian. 

I  do  not  know  how,  upon  a  subject  which  I  began 
with  treating  half  seriously,  I  should  have  fallen  upon 
a  recital  so  eminently  painful ;  but  this  theme  of  poor 
relationship  is  replete  with  so  much  matter  for  tragic 
as  well  as  comic  associations,  that  it  is  difficult  to 
keep  the  account  distinct  without  blending.  The 
earliest  impressions  which  I  received  on  this  matter, 
are  certainly  not  attended  with  anything  painful,  or 
very  humiliating,  in  the  recalling.  At  my  father's 
table  (no  very  splendid  one)  was  to  be  found,  every 
Saturday,  the  mysterious  figure  of  an  aged  gentleman, 
clothed  in  neat  black,  of  a  sad  yet  comely  appear- 
ance. His  deportment  was  of  the  essence  of  gravity  ; 
his  words  few  or  none  ;  and  I  was  not  to  make  a  noise 
in  his  presence.  I  had  litde  inclination  to  have  done 
so  —  for  my  cue  was  to  admire  in  silence.  A  partic- 
ular elbow  chair  was  appropriated  to  him,  which  was 
in  no  case  to  he  violated,     A  peculiar  sort  of  sweet 


POOR  RELATIONS.  1 7 

pudding,  which  appeared  on  no  other  occasion,  dis- 
tinguished the  days  of  his  coming.  I  used  to  think 
him  a  prodigiously  rich  man.  All  I  could  make  out 
of  him  was,  that  he  and  my  father  had  been  school- 
fellows a  world  ago  at  Lincoln,  and  that  he  came  from 
the  Mint.  The  Mint  I  knew  to  be  a  place  where  all 
the  money  was  coined  —  and  I  thought  he  was  the 
owner  of  all  that  money.  Awful  ideas  of  the  Tower 
twined  themselves  about  his  presence.  He  seemed 
above  human  infirmities  and  passions.  A  sort  of  mel- 
ancholy grandeur  invested  him.  From  some  inex- 
plicable doom  I  fancied  him  obliged  to  go  about  in 
an  eternal  suit  of  mourning;  a  captive — a  stately 
being,  let  out  of  the  Tower  on  Saturdays.  Often  have 
I  wondered  at  the  temerity  of  my  father,  who,  in  spite 
of  an  habitual  general  respect  which  we  all  in  common 
manifested  towards  him,  would  venture  now  and  then 
to  stand  up  against  him  in  some  argument,  touching 
their  youthful  days.  The  houses  of  the  ancient  city 
of  Lincoln  are  divided  (as  most  of  my  readers  know) 
between  the  dwellers  on  the  hill,  and  in  the  valley. 
This  marked  distinction  formed  an  obvious  division 
between  the  boys  who  lived  above  (however  brought 
together  in  a  common  school)  and  the  boys  whose 
paternal  residence  was  on  the  plain ;  a  sufficient  cause 
of  hostility  in  the  code  of  these  young  Grotiuses. 
My  father  had  been  a  leading  Mountaineer;  and 
would  still  maintain  the  general  superiority,  in  skill 


1 8  POOR  RELATIONS. 

and  hardihood,  of  the  Above  Boys  (his  own  faction) 
over  the  Below  Boys  (so  were  they  called) ,  of  which 
party  his  contemporary  had  been  a  chieftain.  Many 
and  hot  were  the  skirmishes  on  this  topic  —  the  only 
one  upon  which  the  old  gentleman  was  ever  brought 
out  —  and  bad  blood  bred ;  even  sometimes  almost 
to  the  recommencement  (so  I  expected)  of  actual 
hostilities.  But  my  father,  who  scorned  to  insist  upon 
advantages,  generally  contrived  to  turn  the  conversa- 
tion upon  some  adroit  by-commendation  of  the  old 
Minster ;  in  the  general  preference  of  which,  before 
all  other  cathedrals  in  the  island,  the  dweller  on  the 
hill,  and  the  plain-born,  could  meet  on  a  conciliating 
level,  and  lay  down  their  less  important  differences. 
Once  only  I  saw  the  old  gentleman  really  ruffled,  and 
I  remembered  with  anguish  the  thought  that  came 
over  me  :  *'  Perhaps  he  will  never  come  here  again." 
He  had  been  pressed  to  take  another  plate  of  the 
viand,  which  I  have  already  mentioned  as  the  indis- 
pensable concomitant  of  his  visits.  He  had  refused, 
with  a  resistance  amounting  to  rigour  —  when  my  aunt, 
an  old  Lincolnian,  but  who  had  something  of  this,  in 
common  with  my  cousin  Bridget,  that  she  would  some- 
times press  civility  out  of  season  —  uttered  the  follow- 
ing memorable  application  —  "  Do  take  another  slice, 
Mr.  Billet,  for  you  do  not  get  pudding  every  day." 
The  old  gentleman  said  nothing  at  the  time  —  but  he 
took  occasion   in   the  course  of  the  evening,  when 


POOR   RELATIONS.  19 

some  argument  had  intervened  between  them,  to  utter 
with  an  emphasis  which  chilled  the  company,  and 
which  chills  me  now  as  I  write  it  —  "  Woman,  you 
are  superannuated."  John  Billet  did  not  survive 
long,  after  the  digesting  of  this  affront ;  but  he  sur- 
vived long  enough  to  assure  me  that  peace  was  actu- 
ally restored  !  and,  if  I  remember  aright,  another 
pudding  was  discreetly  substituted  in  the  place  of 
that  which  had  occasioned  the  offence.  He  died  at 
the  Mint  (Armo  1781)  where  he  had  long  held,  what 
he  accounted,  a  comfortable  independence ;  and  with 
five  pounds,  fourteen  shillings,  and  a  penny,  which 
were  found  in  his  escrutoire  after  his  decease,  left  the 
world,  blessing  God  that  he  had  enough  to  bury  him, 
and  that  he  had  never  been  obliged  to  any  man  for  a 
sixpence.     This  was  —  a  Poor  Relation. 


STAGE   ILLUSION. 


A  PLAY  is  said  to  be  well  or  ill  acted  in  proportion 
to  the  scenical  illusion  produced.  Whether  such 
illusion  can  in  any  case  be  perfect,  is  not  the  question. 
The  nearest  approach  to  it,  we  are  told,  is,  when  the 
actor  appears  wholly  unconscious  of  the  presence  of 
spectators.  In  tragedy  —  in  all  which  is  to  affect  the 
feelings  —  this  undivided  attention  to  his  stage  busi- 
ness, seems  indispensable.  Yet  it  is,  in  fact,  dispensed 
with  every  day  by  our  cleverest  tragedians ;  and  while 
these  references  to  an  audience,  in  the  shape  of  rant 
or  sentiment,  are  not  too  frequent  or  palpable,  a  suffi- 
cient quantity  of  illusion  for  the  purposes  of  dramatic 
interest  may  be  said  to  be  produced  in  spite  of  them. 
But,  tragedy  apart,  it  may  be  inquired  whether,  in 
certain  characters  in  comedy,  especially  those  which 
are  a  little  extravagant,  or  which  involve  some  notion 
repugnant  to  the  moral  sense,  it  is  not  a  proof  of  the 
highest  skill  in  the  comedian  when,  without  absolutely 
appealing  to  an  audience,  he  keeps  up  a  tacit  under- 
standing with  them ;  and  makes  them,  unconsciously 


STAGE   ILLUSION.  21 

to  themselves,  a  party  in  the  scene.  The  utmost 
nicety  is  required  in  the  mode  of  doing  this ;  but  we 
speak  only  of  the  great  artists  in  the  profession. 

The  most  mortifying  infirmity  in  human  nature,  to 
feel  in  ourselves,  or  to  contemplate  in  another,  is, 
perhaps,  cowardice.  To  see  a  coward  done  to  the  life 
upon  a  stage  would  produce  any  thing  but  mirth. 
Yet  we  most  of  us  remember  Jack  Bannister's  cow- 
ards. Could  any  thing  be  more  agreeable,  more 
pleasant?  We  loved  the  rogues.  How  was  this 
effected  but  by  the  exquisite  art  of  the  actor  in  a 
perpetual  sub-insinuation  to  us,  the  spectators,  even 
in  the  extremity  of  the  shaking  fit,  that  he  was  not 
half  such  a  coward  as  we  took  him  for?  We  saw 
all  the  common  symptoms  of  the  malady  upon  him ; 
the  quivering  lip,  the  cowering  knees,  the  teeth  chat- 
tering ;  and  could  have  sworn  "  that  man  was  fright- 
ened." But  we  forgot  all  the  while — or  kept  it 
almost  a  secret  to  ourselves  —  that  he  never  once 
lost  his  self-possession ;  that  he  let  out  by  a  thou- 
sand droll  looks  and  gestures  —  meant  at  us,  and 
not  at  all  supposed  to  be  visible  to  his  fellows  in  the 
scene,  that  his  confidence  in  his  own  resources  had 
never  once  deserted  him.  Was  this  a  genuine  pic- 
ture of  a  coward  ?  or  not  rather  a  likeness,  which  the 
clever  artist  contrived  to  palm  upon  us  instead  of 
an  original;  while  we  secretly  connived  at  the  de- 
lusion for  the   purpose  of  greater  pleasure,   than  a 


22  STAGE   ILLUSION. 

more  genuine  counterfeiting  of  the  imbecility,  help- 
lessness, and  utter  self- desertion,  which  we  know  to 
be  concomitants  of  cowardice  in  real  life,  could  have 
given  us? 

Why  are  misers  so  hateful  in  the  world,  and  so 
endurable  on  the  stage,  but  because  the  skilful  actor, 
by  a  sort  of  sub-reference,  rather  than  direct  appeal 
to  us,  disarms  the  character  of  a  great  deal  of  its 
odiousness,  by  seeming  to  engage  our  compassion 
for  the  insecure  tenure  by  which  he  holds  his  money 
bags  and  parchments?  By  this  subtle  vent  half  of 
the  hatefulness  of  the  character  —  the  self-closeness 
with  which  in  real  life  it  coils  itself  up  from  the 
sympathies  of  men  —  evaporates.  The  miser  be- 
comes sympathetic  ;  /.  e.  is  no  genuine  miser.  Here 
again  a  diverting  likeness  is  substituted  for  a  very 
disagreeable  reality. 

Spleen,  irritabihty  —  the  pitiable  infirmities  of  old 
men,  which  produce  only  pain  to  behold  in  the 
realities,  counterfeited  upon  a  stage,  divert  not  alto- 
gether for  the  comic  appendages  to  them,  but  in 
part  from  an  inner  conviction  that  they  are  being 
acted  before  us;  that  a  likeness  only  is  going  on, 
and  not  the  thing  itself.  They  please  by  being  done 
under  the  life,  or  beside  it ;  not  to  the  life.  When 
Gatty  acts  an  old  man,  is  he  angry  indeed?  or  only. 
a  pleasant  counterfeit,  just  enough  of  a  likeness  to 
recognise,  without  pressing  upon  us  the  uneasy  sense 
of  reality? 


STAGE  ILLUSION.  23 

Comedians,  paradoxical  as  it  may  seem,  may  be 
too  natural.  It  was  the  case  with  a  late  actor. 
Nothing  could  be  more  earnest  or  true  than  the 
manner  of  Mr.  Emery;  this  told  excellently  in  his 
Tyke,  and  characters  of  a  tragic  cast.  But  when  he 
carried  the  same  rigid  exclusiveness  of  attention  to 
the  stage  business,  and  wilful  blindness  and  oblivion 
of  everything  before  the  curtain  into  his  comedy, 
it  produced  a  harsh  and  dissonant  effect.  He  was 
out  of  keeping  with  the  rest  of  the  Fersonce  Dramatis, 
There  was  as  little  link  between  him  and  them  as 
betwixt  himself  and  the  audience.  He  was  a  third 
estate,  dry,  repulsive,  and  unsocial  to  all.  Individu- 
ally considered,  his  execution  was  masterly.  But 
comedy  is  not  this  unbending  thing ;  for  this  reason, 
that  the  same  degree  of  credibility  is  not  required 
of  it  as  to  serious  scenes.  The  degrees  of  credibility 
demanded  to  the  two  things  may  be  illustrated  by 
the  different  sort  of  truth  which  we  expect  when  a 
man  tells  us  a  mournful  or  a  merry  story.  If  we 
suspect  the  former  of  falsehood  in  any  one  tittle,  we 
reject  it  altogether.  Our  tears  refuse  to  flow  at  a 
suspected  imposition.  But  the  teller  of  a  mirthful 
tale  has  latitude  allowed  him.  We  are  content  with 
less  than  absolute  truth.  'Tis  the  same  with  dra- 
matic illusion.  We  confess  we  love  in  comedy  to 
see  an  audience  naturalised  behind  the  scenes,  taken 
in  into  the  interest  of  the  drama,  welcomed  as  by- 


24  STAGE   ILLUSION. 

standers  however.  There  is  something  ungracious 
in  a  comic  actor  holding  himself  aloof  from  all  par- 
ticipation or  concern  with  those  who  are  come  to  be 
diverted  by  him.  Macbeth  must  see  the  dagger, 
and  no  ear  but  his  own  be  told  of  it ;  but  an  old 
fool  in  farce  may  think  he  sees  something,  and  by 
conscious  words  and  looks  express  it,  as  plainly  as 
he  can  speak,  to  pit,  box,  and  gallery.  When  an 
impertinent  in  tragedy,  an  Osric,  for  instance,  breaks 
in  upon  the  serious  passions  of  the  scene,  we  approve 
of  the  contempt  with  which  he  is  treated.  But  when 
the  pleasant  impertinent  of  comedy,  in  a  piece  purely 
meant  to  give  delight,  and  raise  mirth  out  of  whim- 
sical perplexities,  worries  the  studious  man  with  tak- 
ing up  his  leisure,  or  making  his  house  his  home, 
the  same  sort  of  contempt  expressed  (however 
natural)  would  destroy  the  balance  of  dehght  in 
the  spectators.  To  make  the  intrusion  comic,  the 
actor  who  plays  the  annoyed  man  must  a  little  desert 
nature ;  he  must,  in  short,  be  thinking  of  the  audi- 
ence, and  express  only  so  much  dissatisfaction  and 
peevishness  as  is  consistent  with  the  pleasure  of 
comedy.  In  other  words,  his  perplexity  must  seem 
half  put  on.  If  he  repel  the  intruder  with  the  sober 
set  face  of  a  man  in  earnest,  and  more  especially  if 
he  deliver  his  expostulations  in  a  tone  which  in  the 
world  must  necessarily  provoke  a  duel ;  his  real-life 
manner  will  destroy  the  whimsical  and  purely  dra- 


STAGE  ILLUSION.  25 

matic  existence  of  the  other  character  (which  to 
render  it  comic  demands  an  antagonist  comicality 
on  the  part  of  the  character  opposed  to  it),  and 
convert  what  was  meant  for  mirth,  rather  than  be- 
lief, into  a  downright  piece  of  impertinence  indeed, 
which  would  raise  no  diversion  in  us,  but  rather  stir 
pain,  to  see  inflicted  in  earnest  upon  any  unworthy 
person.  A  very  judicious  actor  (in  most  of  his 
parts)  seems  to  have  fallen  into  an  error  of  this 
sort  in  his  playing  with  Mr.  Wrench  in  the  farce  of 
Free  and  Easy. 

Many  instances  would  be  tedious ;  these  may  suf- 
fice to  show  that  comic  acting  at  least  does  not 
always  demand  from  the  performer  that  strict  ab- 
straction from  all  reference  to  an  audience,  which 
is  exacted  of  it ;  but  that  in  some  cases  a  sort  of 
compromise  may  take  place,  and  all  the  purposes 
of  dramatic  delight  be  attained  by  a  judicious  under- 
standing, not  too  openly  announced,  between  the 
ladies  and  gentlemen  —  on  both  sides  of  the  curtain. 


TO  THE  SHADE   OF   ELLISTON. 


JOYOUSEST  of  once  embodied  spirits,  whither  at 
length  hast  thou  flown?  to  what  genial  region  are 
we  permitted  to  conjecture  that  thou  hast  flitted. 

Art  thou  sowing  thy  wild  oats  yet  (the  harvest 
time  was  still  to  come  with  thee)  upon  casual  sands 
of  Avernus?  or  art  thou  enacting  Rover  (as  we 
would  gladlier  think)  by  wandering  Elysian  streams  ? 

This  mortal  frame,  while  thou  didst  play  thy  brief 
antics  amongst  us,  was  in  truth  any  thing  but  a 
prison  to  thee,  as  the  vain  Platonist  dreams  of  this 
body  to  be  no  better  than  a  county  gaol,  forsooth, 
or  some  house  of  durance  vile,  whereof  the  five 
senses  are  the  fetters.  Thou  knewest  better  than  to 
be  in  a  hurry  to  cast  ofl"  those  gyves ;  and  had  no- 
tice to  quit,  I  fear,  before  thou  wert  quite  ready  to 
abandon  this  fleshy  tenement.  It  was  thy  Pleasure 
House,  thy  Palace  of  Dainty  Devices ;  thy  Louvre, 
or  thy  White  Hall. 

What  new  mysterious  lodgings  dost  thou  tenant 
now?  or  when  may  we  expect  thy  aerial  house- 
warming  ? 


TO  THE  SHADE  OF  ELLISTON.  2/ 

Tartarus  we  know,  and  we  have  read  of  the  Blessed 
Shades;  now  cannot  I  intelligibly  fancy  thee  in 
either. 

Is  it  too  much  to  hazard  a  conjecture,  that  (as  the 
schoolmen  admitted  a  receptacle  apart  for  Patriarchs 
and  un-chrisom  Babes)  there  may  exist  —  not  far 
perchance  from  that  storehouse  of  all  vanities,  which 
Milton  saw  in  visions  —  a  Limbo  somewhere  for 
Players?  and  that 

Up  thither  like  aerial  vapours  fly 

Both  all  Stage  things,  and  all  that  in  Stage  things 

Built  their  fond  hopes  of  glory,  or  lasting  fame  ? 

All  the  unaccomplish'd  works  of  Authors'  hands, 

Abortive,  monstrous,  or  unkindly  mix'd, 

Danm'd  upon  earth,  fleet  thither  — 

Play,  Opera,  Farce,  with  all  their  trumpery  — 

There,  by  the  neighbouring  moon  (by  some  not 
improperly  supposed  thy  Regent  Planet  upon  earth) 
mayst  thou  not  still  be  acting  thy  managerial  pranks, 
great  disembodied  Lessee  ?  but  Lessee  still,  and  still 
a  Manager. 

In  Green  Rooms,  impervious  to  mortal  eye,  the 
muse  beholds  the  wielding  posthumous  empire. 

Thin  ghosts  of  Figurantes  (never  plump  on  earth) 
circle  thee  in  endlessly,  and  still  their  song  is  Fye  on 
sinful  Fhantasy, 

Magnificent  were  thy  capriccios  on  this  globe  of 
earth,  Robert  William  Elliston  !  for  as  yet  we 
know  not  thy  new  name  in  heaven. 


28  TO  THE  SHADE   OF   ELLISTON. 

It  irks  me  to  think,  that,  stript  of  thy  regalities, 
thou  shouldst  ferry  over,  a  poor  forked  shade,  in 
crazy  Stygian  wherry.  Methinks  I  hear  the  old  boat- 
man, paddling  by  the  weedy  wharf,  with  raucid  voice, 
bawling  "  Sculls,  Sculls  :  "  to  which,  with  waving 
hand,  and  majestic  action,  thou  deignest  no  reply, 
other  than  in  two  curt  monosyllables,  '*  No  :  Oars." 

But  the  laws  of  Pluto's  kingdom  know  small  differ- 
ence between  king,  and  cobbler;  manager,  and  call- 
boy  ;  and,  if  haply  your  dates  of  Hfe  were  contermi- 
nant,  you  are  quietly  taking  your  passage,  cheek  by 
cheek  (O  ignoble  levelling  of  Death)  with  the  shade 
of  some  recently  departed  candle-snuffer. 

But  mercy  !  what  stripping s,  what  tearing  off  of 
histrionic  robes,  and  private  vanities  !  what  denuda- 
tions to  the  bone,  before  the  surly  Ferryman  will 
admit  you  to  set  a  foot  within  his  battered  lighter ! 

Crowns,  sceptres  ;  shield,  sword,  and  truncheon ; 
thy  own  coronation  robes  (for  thou  hast  brought  the 
whole  property  man's  wardrobe  with  thee,  enough 
to  sink  a  navy)  ;  the  judge's  ermine ;  the  coxcomb's 
wig ;  the  snuff-box  a  la  Foppington  —  all  must  over- 
board, he  positively  swears  —  and  that  ancient  mar- 
iner brooks  no  denial ;  for,  since  the  tiresome 
monodrame  of  the  old  Thracian  Harper,  Charon, 
it  is  to  be  believed,  hath  shown  small  taste  for 
theatricals. 

x\ye,  now  'tis  done.  You  are  just  boat  weight; 
pura  et  puta  anima. 


TO   THE   SHADE   OF  ELLISTON.  29 

But  bless  me,  how  little  you  look  ! 

So  shall  we  all  look  —  kings,  and  keysars  —  stript 
for  the  last  voyage. 

But  the  murky  rogue  pushes  off.  Adieu,  pleasant, 
and  thrice  pleasant  shade  !  with  my  parting  thanks 
for  many  a  heavy  hour  of  life  lightened  by  thy  harm- 
less extravaganzas,  public  or  domestic. 

Rhadamanthus,  who  tries  the  lighter  causes  below, 
leaving  to  his  two  brethren  the  heavy  calendars  — 
honest  Rhadamanth,  always  partial  to  players,  weigh- 
ing their  parti-coloured  existence  here  upon  earth,  — 
making  account  of  the  few  foibles,  that  may  have 
shaded  thy  real  life,  as  we  call  it,  (though,  substan- 
tially, scarcely  less  a  vapour  than  thy  idlest  vagaries 
upon  the  boards  of  Drury,)  as  but  of  so  many 
echoes,  natural  re-percussions,  and  results  to  be  ex- 
pected from  the  assumed  extravagancies  of  thy  sec- 
ondary or  mock  life ,  nightly  upon  a  stage  —  after  a 
lenient  castigation,  with  rods  lighter  than  of  those 
Medusean  ringlets,  but  just  enough  to  "whip  the 
offending  Adam  out  of  thee  "  —  shall  courteously 
dismiss  thee  at  the  right  hand  gate  —  the  o.  p.  side 
of  Hades  —  that  conducts  to  masques,  and  merry- 
makings, in  the  Theatre  Royal  of  Proserpine. 

PLAUDITO,  ET  VALETO. 


ELLISTONIANA. 


My  acquaintance  with  the  pleasant  creature,  whose 
loss  we  all  deplore,  was  but  slight. 

My  first  introduction  to  E.,  which  afterwards 
ripened  into  an  acquaintance  a  little  on  this  side  of 
intimacy,  was  over  a  counter  of  the  Leamington  Spa 
Library,  then  newly  entered  upon  by  a  branch  of 
his  family.  E.,  whom  nothing  misbecame  —  to  aus- 
picate, I  suppose,  the  filial  concern,  and  set  it  a 
going  with  a  lustre  —  was  serving  in  person  two 
damsels  fair,  who  had  come  into  the  shop  ostensibly 
to  inquire  for  some  new  pubHcation,  but  in  reality 
to  have  a  sight  of  the  illustrious  shopman,  hoping 
some  conference.  With  what  an  air  did  he  reach 
down  the  volume,  dispassionately  giving  his  opinion 
upon  the  worth  of  the  work  in  question,  and  launch- 
ing out  into  a  dissertation  on  its  comparative  merits 
with  those  of  certain  publications  of  a  similar  stamp, 
its  rivals  !  his  enchanted  customers  fairly  hanging  on 
his  lips,  subdued  to  their  authoritative  sentence.  So 
have  I  seen  a  gentleman  in  comedy  acting  the  shop- 


ELLISTONIANA.  31 

man.  So  Lovelace  sold  his  gloves  in  King  Street. 
I  admired  the  histrionic  art,  by  which  he  contrived 
to  carry  clean  away  every  notion  of  disgrace,  from 
the  occupation  he  had  so  generously  submitted  to; 
and  from  that  hour  I  judged  him,  with  no  after  re- 
pentance, to  be  a  person,  with  whom  it  would  be  a 
felicity  to  be  more  acquainted. 

To  descant  upon  his  merits  as  a  Comedian  would 
be  superfluous.  With  his  blended  private  and  pro- 
fessional habits  alone  I  have  to  do ;  that  harmonious 
fusion  of  the  manners  of  the  player  into  those  of 
every  day  life,  which  brought  the  stage  boards  into 
streets,  and  dining-parlours,  and  kept  up  the  play 
when  the  play  was  ended.  —  "I  like  Wrench,"  a 
friend  was  saying  to  him  one  day,  "because  he  is 
the  same  natural,  easy  creature,  on  the  stage,  that  he 
is  offy  "My  case  exactly,"  retorted  Elliston  —  with 
a  charming  forgetfulness,  that  the  converse  of  a 
proposition  does  not  always  lead  to  the  same  con- 
clusion —  "I  am  the  same  person  off  the  stage  that 
I  am  ony  The  inference,  at  first  sight,  seems  iden- 
tical ;  but  examine  it  a  little,  and  it  confesses  only, 
that  the  one  performer  was  never,  and  the  other 
always,  acting. 

And  in  truth  this  was  the  charm  of  Elliston' s  pri- 
vate deportment.  You  had  a  spirited  performance 
always  going  on  before  your  eyes,  with  nothing  to 
pay.     As  where  a  monarch  takes  up  his  casual  abode 


32  ELLISTONIANA. 

for  a  night,  the  poorest  hovel  which  he  honours  by 
his  sleeping  in  it,  becomes  ipso  facto  for  that  time 
a  palace  ;  so  wherever  Elliston  walked,  sate,  or  stood 
still,  there  was  the  theatre.  He  carried  about  with 
him  his  pit,  boxes,  and  galleries,  and  set  up  his  port- 
able playhouse  at  corners  of  streets,  and  in  the 
market-places.  Upon  flintiest  pavements  he  trod  the 
boards  still;  and  if  his  theme  chanced  to  be  pas- 
sionate, the  green  baize  carpet  of  tragedy  spontane- 
ously rose  beneath  his  feet.  Now  this  was  hearty, 
and  showed  a  love  for  his  art.  So  Apelles  always 
painted  —  in  thought.  So  G.  D.  always  poetises. 
I  hate  a  lukewarm  artist.  I  have  known  actors  — 
and  some  of  them  of  Elliston's  own  stamp  —  who 
shall  have  agreeably  been  amusing  you  in  the  part 
of  a  rake  or  a  coxcomb,  through  the  two  or  three 
hours  of  their  dramatic  existence;  but  no  sooner 
does  the  curtain  fall  with  its  leaden  clatter,  but  a 
spirit  of  lead  seems  to  seize  on  all  their  faculties. 
They  emerge  sour,  morose  persons,  intolerable  to 
their  families,  servants,  &c.  Another  shall  have  been 
expanding  your  heart  with  generous  deeds  and  sen- 
timents, till  it  even  beats  with  yearnings  of  universal 
sympathy ;  you  absolutely  long  to  go  home,  and  do 
some  good  action.  The  play  seems  tedious,  till  you 
can  get  fairly  out  of  the  house,  and  realize  your 
laudable  intentions.  At  length  the  final  bell  rings, 
and  this  cordial  representative  of  all  that  is  amiable 


ELLISTONIANA.  33 

in  human  breasts  steps  forth  —  a  miser.  ElHston 
was  more  of  a  piece.  Did  he  play  Ranger?  and 
did  Ranger  fill  the  general  bosom  of  the  town  with 
satisfaction?  why  should  he  not  be  Ranger,  and  dif- 
fuse the  same  cordial  satisfaction  among  his  private 
circles?  with  his  temperament,  his  animal  spirits,  his 
good-nature,  his  follies  perchance,  could  he  do  better 
than  identify  himself  with  his  impersonation  ?  Are 
we  to  like  a  pleasant  rake,  or  coxcomb,  on  the  stage, 
and  give  ourselves  airs  of  aversion  for  the  identical 
character  presented  to  us  in  actual  life?  or  what 
would  the  performer  have  gained  by  divesting  him- 
self of  the  impersonation?  Could  the  man  Elliston 
have  been  essentially  different  from  his  part,  even  if 
he  had  avoided  to  reflect  to  us  studiously,  in  private 
circles,  the  airy  briskness,  the  forwardness,  and  'scape 
goat  trickeries  of  his  prototype  ? 

"  But  there  is  something  not  natural  in  this  ever- 
lasting acting ;  we  want  the  real  man." 

Are  you  quite  sure  that  it  is  not  the  man  himself, 
whom  you  cannot,  or  will  not  see,  under  some  adven- 
titious trappings,  which,  nevertheless,  sit  not  at  all 
inconsistently  upon  him  ?  What  if  it  is  the  nature  of 
some  men  to  be  highly  artificial?  The  fault  is  least 
reprehensible  in  players.  Gibber  was  his  own  Fop- 
pington,  with  almost  as  much  wit  as  Vanburgh  could 
add  to  it. 

"  My  conceit  of  his  person,"  —  it  is  Ben  Jonson 
3 


34  ELLISTONIANA. 

speaking  of  Lord  Bacon,  —  "  was  never  increased 
towards  him  by  his  place  or  honours.  But  I  have, 
and  do  reverence  him  for  the  greatness^  that  was 
only  proper  to  himself;  in  that  he  seemed  to  me 
ever  one  of  the  greatest  men,  that  had  been  in  many 
ages.  In  his  adversity  I  ever  prayed  that  heaven 
would  give  him  strength ;  for  greatness  he  could  not 
want." 

The  quality  here  commended  was  scarcely  less  con- 
spicuous in  the  subject  of  these  idle  reminiscences, 
than  in  my  Lord  Verulam.  Those  who  have  imag- 
ined that  an  unexpected  elevation  to  the  direction 
of  a  great  London  Theatre,  affected  the  consequence 
of  Elliston,  or  at  all  changed  his  nature,  knew  not 
the  essential  gi-eatness  of  the  man  whom  they  dis- 
parage. It  was  my  fortune  to  encounter  him  near 
St.  Dunstan's  Church  (which,  with  its  punctual  giants, 
is  now  no  more  than  dust  and  a  shadow) ,  on  the 
morning  of  his  election  to  that  high  office.  Grasping 
my  hand  with  a  look  of  significance,  he  only  uttered, 
—  *'  Have  you  heard  the  news?  "  —  then  with  another 
look  following  up  the  blow,  he  subjoined,  "  I  am  the 
future  Manager  of  Drury  Lane  Theatre."  —  Breath- 
less as  he  saw  me,  he  stayed  not  for  congratulation 
or  reply,  but  mutely  stalked  away,  leaving  me  to 
chew  upon  his  new-blown  dignities  at  leisure.  In  fact, 
nothing  could  be  said  to  it.  Expressive  silence  alone 
could  muse  his  praise.     This  was  in  his  great  style. 


ELLISTONIANA.  35 

But  was  he  less  great,  (be  witness,  O  ye  Powers  of 
Equanimity,  that  supported  in  the  ruins  of  Carthage 
the  consular  exile,  and  more  recently  transmuted  for 
a  more  illustrious  exile,  the  barren  constableship  of 
Elba  into  an  image  of  Imperial  France),  when,  in 
melancholy  after-years,  again,  much  near  the  same 
spot,  I  met  him,  when  that  sceptre  had  been  wrested 
from  his  hand,  and  his  dominion  was  curtailed  to 
the  petty  managership,  and  part  proprietorship,  of 
the  small  Olympic,  his  Elba  ?  He  still  played  nightly 
upon  the  boards  of  Drury,  but  in  parts  alas  !  allotted 
to  him,  not  magnificently  distributed  by  him.  Waiv- 
ing his  great  loss  as  nothing,  and  magnificently  sink- 
ing the  sense  of  fallen  material  grandeur  in  the  more 
liberal  resentment  of  depreciations  done  to  his  more 
lofty /«/'^//(?r/?^^/ pretensions,  "Have  you  heard"  (his 
customary  exordium) — "have  you  heard,"  said  he, 
"how  they  treat  me?  they  put  me  in  comedy. ^^ 
Thought  I  —  but  his  finger  on  his  lips  forbade  any 
verbal  interruption  —  "  where  could  they  have  put 
you  better?"  Then,  after  a  pause — "Where  I 
formerly  played  Romeo,  I  now  play  Mercutio,"  — 
and  so  again  he  stalked  away,  neither  staying,  nor 
caring  for,  responses. 

O,  it  was  a  rich  scene,  —  but  Sir  A C , 

the  best  of  story-tellers  and  surgeons,  who  mends  a 
lame  narrative  almost  as  well  as  he  sets  a  fracture, 
alone  could  do  justice  to  it  —  that  I  was  witness  to, 


36  ELLISTONIANA. 

in  the  tarnished  room  (that  had  once  been  green) 
of  that  same  little  Olympic.  There,  after  his  depo- 
sition from  Imperial  Drury,  he  substituted  a  throne. 
That  Olympic  Hill  was  his  "  highest  heaven ;  "  him- 
self "Jove  in  his  chair."  There  he  sat  in  state, 
while  before  him,  on  complaint  of  prompter,  was 
brought  for  judgment  —  how  shall  I  describe  her?  — 
one  of  those  little  tawdry  things  that  flirt  at  the  tails 
of  choruses  —  a  probationer  for  the  town,  in  either 
of  its  senses  —  the  pertest  little  drab  —  a  dirty  fringe 
and  appendage  of  the  lamps'  smoke  —  who,  it  seems, 
on  some  disapprobation  expressed  by  a  "  highly  re- 
spectable "  audience,  had  precipitately  quitted  her 
station  on  the  boards,  and  withdrawn  her  small 
talents  in  disgust. 

**And  how  dare  you,"  said  her  Manager  —  assum. 
ing  a  censorial  severity  which  would  have  crushed 
the  confidence  of  a  Vestris,  and  disarmed  that  beau- 
tiful Rebel  herself  of  her  professional  caprices  —  I 
verily  believe,  he  thought  ker  standing  before  him  — 
"  how  dare  you.  Madam,  withdraw  yourself,  without 
a  notice,  from  your  theatrical  duties?"  "I  was 
hissed.  Sir."  "  And  you  have  the  presumption  to 
decide  upon  the  taste  of  the  town?  "  "  I  don't  know 
that,  Sir,  but  I  will  never  stand  to  be  hissed,"  was 
the  subjoinder  of  young  Confidence  —  when  gather- 
ing up  his  features  into  one  significant  mass  of 
wonder,  pity,  and    expostulatory    indignation — in   a 


ELLISTONIANA.  37 

lesson  never  to  have  been  lost  upon  a  creature  less 
forward  than  she  who  stood  before  him  —  his  words 
were  these  :  "  They  have  hissed  w^." 

'Twas  the  identical  argument  a  fortiori ,  which  the 
son  of  Peleus  uses  to  Lycaon  trembling  under  his 
lance,  to  persuade  him  to  take  his  destiny  with  a 
good  grace.  "  I  too  am  mortal."  And  it  is  to  be 
believed  that  in  both  cases  the  rhetoric  missed  of 
its  apphcation,  for  want  of  a  proper  understanding 
with  the  faculties  of  the  respective  recipients. 

" Quite  an  Opera  pit,'  he  said  to  me,  as  he  was 
courteously  conducting  me  over  the  benches  of  his 
Surrey  Theatre,  the  last  retreat,  and  recess,  of  his 
every-day  waning  grandeur. 

Those  who  knew  Elliston,  will  know  the  manner 
in  which  he  pronounced  the  latter  sentence  of  the 
few  words  I  am  about  to  record.  One  proud  day  to 
me  he  took  his  roast  mutton  with  us  in  the  Temple, 
to  which  I  had  superadded  a  preliminary  haddock. 
After  a  rather  plentiful  partaking  of  the  meagre  ban- 
quet, not  unrefreshed  with  the  humbler  sort  of  liquors, 
I  made  a  sort  of  apology  for  the  humility  of  the 
fare,  observing  that  for  my  own  part  I  never  ate  but 
of  one  dish  at  dinner.  "  I  too  never  eat  but  one 
thing  at  dinner" — was  his  reply  —  then  after  a 
pause  —  "reckoning  fish  as  nothing."  The  manner 
was  all.  It  was  as  if  by  one .  peremptory  sentence 
he  had  decreed   the  annihilation  of  all  the   savory 


38  ELLISTONIANA. 

esculents,  which  the  pleasant  and  nutritious- food- 
giving  Ocean  pours  forth  upon  poor  humans  from 
her  watery  bosom.  This  was  greatness,  tempered 
with  considerate  tenderness  to  the  feelings  of  his 
scanty  but  welcoming  entertainer. 

Great  wert  thou  in  thy  life,  Robert  William 
Elliston  !  and  not  lessened  in  thy  death,  if  report 
speak  truly,  which  says  that  thou  didst  direct  that 
thy  mortal  remains  should  repose  under  no  inscrip- 
tion but  one  of  pure  Latinity,  Classical  was  thy 
bringing  up  !  and  beautiful  was  the  feeling  on  thy 
last  bed,  which,  connecting  the  man  with  the  boy, 
took  thee  back  in  thy  latest  exercise  of  imagination, 
to  the  days  when,  undreaming  of  Theatres  and 
Managerships,  thou  wert  a  scholar,  and  an  early  ripe 
one,  under  the  roofs  builded  by  the  munificent  and 
pious  Colet.  For  thee  the  Pauline  Muses  weep. 
In  elegies,  that  shall  silence  this  crude  prose,  they 
shall  celebrate  thy  praise. 


DETACHED   THOUGHTS   ON   BOOKS 
AND    READING. 


To  mind  the  inside  of  a  book  is  to  entertain  one's  self  with 
the  forced  product  of  another  man's  brain.  Now  I  think  a 
man  of  quality  and  breeding  may  be  much  amused  with  the 
natural  sprouts  of  his  own. 

4  ,  Lord  Foppington  in  the  Relapse. 


An  ingenious  acquaintance  of  my  own  was  so 
much  struck  with  this  bright  sally  of  his  Lordship, 
that  he  has  left  off  reading  altogether,  to  the  great 
improvement  of  his  originality.  At  the  hazard  of 
losing  some  credit  on  this  head,  I  must  confess  that 
I  dedicate  no  inconsiderable  portion  of  my  time  to 
other  people's  thoughts.  I  dream  away  my  life  in 
others'  speculations.  I  love  to  lose  myself  in  other 
men's  minds.  When  I  am  not  walking,  I  am  read- 
ing ;  I  cannot  sit  and  think.     Books  think  for  me. 

I  have  no  repugnances.  Shaftesbury  is  not  too 
genteel  for  me,  nor  Jonathan  Wild  too  low.  I  can 
read  any  thing  which  I  call  a  book.  There  are 
things  in  that  shape  which  I  cannot  allow  for  such. 


40  DETACHED   THOUGHTS 

In  this  catalogue  of  books  which  are  no  books  — 
biblia  a-biblia  —  I  reckon  Court  Calendars,  Direc- 
tories, Pocket  Books,  Draught  Boards  bound  and 
lettered  at  the  back,  Scientific  Treatises,  Almanacks, 
Statutes  at  Large  ;  the  works  of  Hume,  Gibbon, 
Robertson,  Beattie,  Soame  Jenyns,  and,  generally, 
all  those  volumes  which  "  no  gentleman's  library 
should  be  without :  "  the  Histories  of  Flavius  Jose- 
phus  (that  learned  Jew),  and  Paley's  Moral  Philos- 
ophy. With  these  exceptions,  I  can  read  almost 
any  thing.  1  bless  my  stars  for  a  taste  so  catholic,  so 
unexcluding.  A  |^  4# 

I  confess  that  it  moves  my  spleen  to  see  these 
things  in  books'  clothing  perched  upon  shelves,  like 
false  saints,  usurpers  of  true  shrines,  intruders  into 
the  sanctuary,  thrusting  out  the  legitimate  occupants. 
To  reach  down  a  well-bound  semblance  of  a  volume, 
and  hope  it  some  kind-hearted  play-book,  then, 
opening  what  "  seem  its  leaves,"  to  come  bolt  upon 
a  withering  Population  Essay.  To  expect  a  Steele, 
or  a  Farquhar,  and  find  —  Adam  Smith.  To  view 
a  well-arranged  assortment  of  blockheaded  Encyclo- 
paedias (Anglicanas  or  Metropolitanas)  set  out  in 
an  array  of  Russia,  or  Morocco,  when  a  tithe  of  that 
good  leather  would  comfortably  re-clothe  my  shiver- 
ing folios ;  would  renovate  Paracelsus  himself,  and 
enable  old  Raymund  Lully  to  look  like  himself  again 
in  the  world.     I    never  see  these  impostors,  but  I 


ON  BOOKS  AND   READING.  41 

long  to  strip  them,  to  warm  my  ragged  veterans  in 
their  spoils. 

To  be  strong-backed  and  neat-bound  is  the  de- 
sideratum of  a  volume.  Magnificence  comes  after. 
This,  when  it  can  be  afforded,  is  not  to  be  lavished 
upon  all  kinds  of  books  indiscriminately.  I  would 
not  dress  a  set  of  Magazines,  for  instance,  in  full 
suit.  The  dishabille,  or  half-binding  (with  Russia 
backs  ever)  is  our  costume.  A  Shakspeare,  or  a 
Milton  (unless  the  first  editions),  it  were  mere  fop- 
pery to  trick  out  in  gay  apparel.  The  possession  of 
them  confers  no  distinction.  The  exterior  of  them 
(the  things  themselves  being  so  common),  strange 
to  say,  raises  no  sweet  emotions,  no  tickling  sense  of 
property  in  the  owner.  Thomson's  Seasons,  again, 
looks  best  (I  maintain  it)  a  little  torn,  and  dog's- 
eared.  How  beautiful  to  a  genuine  lover  of  reading 
are  the  sullied  leaves,  and  worn  out  appearance,  nay 
the  very  odour  (beyond  Russia,)  if  we  would  not  for- 
get kind  feelings  in  fastidiousness,  of  an  old  "  Circu- 
lating Library  "  Tom  Jones,  or  Vicar  of  Wakefield  ! 
How  they  speak  of  the  thousand  thumbs,  that  have 
turned  over  their  pages  with  delight !  —  of  the  lone 
sempstress,  whom  they  may  have  cheered  (milliner, 
or  harder-working  mantua-maker)  after  her  long 
day's  needle-toil,  running  far  into  midnight,  when 
she  has  snatched  an  hour,  ill  spared  from  sleep,  to 
steep  her  cares,  as  in  some  Lethean  cup,  in  spelling 


42  DETACHED   THOUGHTS 

out  their  enchanting  contents !  Who  would  have 
them  a  whit  less  soiled?  What  better  condition 
could  we  desire  to  see  them  in? 

In  some  respects  the  better  a  book  is,  the  less  it 
demands  from  binding.  Fielding,  Smollet,  Sterne, 
and  all  that  class  of  perpetually  self-reproductive 
volumes  —  Great  Nature's  Stereotypes  —  we  see  them 
individually  perish  with  less  regret,  because  we  know 
the  copies  of  them  to  be  "  eterne."  But  where  a 
book  is  at  once  both  good  and  rare — where  the 
individual  is  almost  the  species,  and  when  that 
perishes, 

"  We  know  not  where  is  that  Promethean  torch 
That  can  its  light  relumine  "  — 

such  a  book,  for  instance,  as  the  Life  of  the  Duke 
of  Newcastle,  by  his  Duchess  —  no  casket  is  rich 
enough,  no  casing  sufficiently  durable,  to  honour 
and  keep  safe  such  a  jewel. 

Not  only  rare  volumes  of  this  description,  which 
seem  hopeless  ever  to  be  reprinted ;  but  old  editions 
of  writers,  such  as  Sir  Philip  Sydney,  Bishop  Taylor, 
Milton  in  his  prose -works,  Fuller  —  of  whom  we 
have  reprints,  yet  the  books  themselves,  though  they 
go  about,  and  are  talked  of  here  and  there,  we  know, 
have  not  endenizened  themselves  (nor  possibly  ever 
will)  in  the  national  heart,  so  as  to  become  stock 
books  —  it  is  good  to  possess  these  in  durable  and 


ON   BOOKS   AND   READING.  43 

costly  covers.  I  do  not  care  for  a  First  Folio  of 
Shakspeare.  I  rather  prefer  the  common  editions  of 
Rowe  and  Tonson,  without  notes,  and  with  plates^ 
which,  being  so  execrably  bad,  serve  as  maps,  or 
modest  remembrancers,  to  the  text ;  and  without 
pretending  to  any  supposable  emulation  with  it,  are 
so  much  better  than  the  Shakspeare  gallery  engrav- 
ingSy  which  did.  I  have  a  community  of  feeling  with 
my  countrymen  about  his  Plays,  and  I  like  those 
editions  of  him  best,  which  have  been  oftenest  tum- 
bled about  and  handled.  —  On  the  contrary,  I  can- 
not read  Beaumont  and  Fletcher  but  in  Folio.  The 
Octavo  editions  are  painful  to  look  at.  I  have  no 
sympathy  with  them.  If  they  were  as  much  read  as 
the  current  editions  of  the  other  poet,  I  should  pre- 
fer them  in  that  shape  to  the  older  one.  I  do  not 
know  a  more  heartless  sight  than  the  reprint  of  the 
Anatomy  of  Melancholy.  What  need  was  there  of 
unearthing  the  bones  of  that  fantastic  old  great  man, 
to  expose  them  in  a  winding-sheet  of  the  newest 
fashion  to  modem  censure?  what  hapless  stationer 
could  dream  of  Burton  ever  becoming  popular?  — 
The  wretched  Malone  could  not  do  worse,  when  he 
bribed  the  sexton  of  Stratford  church  to  let  him 
white-wash  the  painted  effigy  of  old  Shakspeare, 
which  stood  there,  in  rude  but  lively  fashion  de- 
picted, to  the  very  colour  of  the  cheek,  the  eye,  the 
eye-brow,  hair,  the  very  dress  he  used  to  wear  —  the 


44  DETACHED  THOUGHTS 

only  authentic  testimony  we  had,  however  imperfect, 
of  these  curious  parts  and  parcels  of  him.  They 
covered  him  over  with  a  coat  of  white  paint.  By 
,  if  I  had  been  a  justice  of  peace  for  Warwick- 
shire, I  would  have  clapt  both  commentator  and 
sexton  fast  in  the  stocks,  for  a  pair  of  meddling 
sacrilegious  varlets. 

I  think  I  see  them  at  their  work  —  these  sapient 
trouble-tombs. 

Shall  I  be  thought  fantastical,  if  I  confess,  that  the 
names  of  some  of  our  poets  sound  sweeter,  and  have 
a  finer  relish  to  the  ear  —  to  mine,  at  least  —  than 
that  of  Milton  or  of  Shakspeare  ?  It  may  be,  that  the 
latter  are  more  staled  and  rung  upon  in  common  dis- 
course. The  sweetest  names,  and  which  carry  a 
perfume  in  the  mention,  are,  Kit  Marlowe,  Drayton, 
Drummond  of  Hawthornden,  and  Cowley. 

Much  depends  upon  when  and  where  you  read  a 
book.  In  the  five  or  six  impatient  minutes,  before 
the  dinner  is  quite  ready,  who  would  think  of  taking 
up  the  Fairy  Queen  for  a  stop-gap,  or  a  volume  of 
Bishop  Andrewes'  sermons? 

Milton  almost  requires  a  solemn  service  of  music 
to  be  played  before  you  enter  upon  him.  But  he 
brings  his  music,  to  which,  who  listens,  had  need 
bring  docile  thoughts,  and  purged  ears. 

Winter  evenings  —  the  world  shut  out  —  with  less 
of  ceremony  the  gentle  Shakspeare  enters.  At  such  a 
season,  the  Tempest,  or  his  own  Winter's  Tale  — 


ON   BOOKS   AND   READING.  45 

These  two  poets  you  cannot  avoid  reading  aloud  — - 
to  yourself,  or  (as  it  chances)  to  some  single  person 
listening.  More  than  one  —  and  it  degenerates  into 
an  audience. 

Books  of  quick  interest,  that  hurry  on  for  incidents, 
are  for  the  eye  to  glide  over  only.  It  will  not  do  to 
read  them  out.  I  could  never  listen  to  even  the 
better  kind  of  modern  novels  without  extreme  irk- 
someness. 

A  newspaper,  read  out,  is  intolerable.  In  some  of 
the  Bank  offices  it  is  the  custom  (to  save  so  much  in- 
dividual time)  for  one  of  the  clerks  —  who  is  the  best 
scholar  —  to  commence  upon  the  Times,  or  the 
Chronicle,  and  recite  its  entire  contents  aloud  pro 
bono  publico.  With  every  advantage  of  lungs  and 
elocution,  the  effect  is  singularly  vapid.  In  barbers* 
shops  and  public- houses  a  fellow  will  get  up,  and  spell 
out  a  paragraph,  which  he  communicates  as  some 
discovery.  Another  follows  with  his  selection.  So 
the  entire  journal  transpires  at  length  by  piece-meal. 
Seldom-readers  are  slow  readers,  and,  without  this  ex- 
pedient no  one  in  the  company  would  probably  ever 
travel  through  the  contents  of  a  whole  paper. 

Newspapers  always  excite  curiosity.  No  one  ever 
lays  one  down  without  a  feeling  of  disappointment. 

What  an  eternal  time  that  gentleman  in  black,  at 
Nando's,  keeps  the  paper  !  I  am  sick  of  hearing  the 
waiter  bawling  out  incessantly,  "the  Chronicle  is  in 
hand.  Sir." 


46  DETACHED   THOUGHTS 

Coming  in  to  an  inn  at  night  —  having  ordered 
your  supper  —  what  can  be  more  delightful  than  to 
find  lying  in  the  window-seat,  left  there  time  out  of 
mind  by  the  carelessness  of  some  former  guest  —  two 
or  three  numbers  of  the  old  Town  and  Country  Maga- 
zine,   with    its    amusing    tete-d-tete   pictures  — "  The 

Royal    Lover   and    Lady    G ;"    "The    Melting 

Platonic  and  the  old  Beau,"  —  and  such  like  anti- 
quated scandal  ?  Would  you  exchange  it  —  at  that 
time,  and  in  that  place  —  for  a  better  book  ? 

Poor  Tobin,  who  latterly  fell  blind,  did  not  regret 
it  so  much  for  the  weightier  kinds  of  reading  —  the 
Paradise  Lost,  or  Comus,  he  could  have  read  to  him 
—  but  he  missed  the  pleasure  of  skimming  over  with 
his  own  eye  a  magazine,  or  a  light  pamphlet. 

I  should  not  care  to  be  caught  in  the  serious 
avenues  of  some  cathedral  alone,  and  reading  Can- 
dide. 

I  do  not  remember  a  more  whimsical  surprise  than 
having  been  once  detected  —  by  a  familiar  damsel  — 
reclined  at  my  ease  upon  the  grass,  on  Primrose  Hill 
(her  Cythera),  reading  —  Pamela.  There  was  noth- 
ing in  the  book  to  make  a  man  seriously  ashamed  at 
the  exposure ;  but  as  she  seated  herself  down  by  me, 
and  seemed  determined  to  read  in  company,  I  could 
have  wished  it  had  been  —  any  other  book.  We 
read  on  very  sociably  for  a  few  pages ;  and,  not  find- 
ing the  author  much  to  her  taste,  she  got  up,  and  — 


ON   BOOKS   AND   READING.  47 

went  away.  Gentle  casuist,  I  leave  it  to  thee  to  con- 
jecture, whether  the  blush  (for  there  was  one  between 
us)  was  the  property  of  the  nymph  or  the  swain  in 
this  dilemma.  From  me  you  shall  never  get  the 
secret. 

I  am  not  much  a  friend  to  out-of-doors  reading. 
I  cannot  settle  my  spirits  to  it.  I  knew  a  Unitarian 
minister,  who  was  generally  to  be  seen  upon  Snow- 
hill  (as  yet  Skinner's-street  was  not)^  between  the 
hours  of  ten  and  eleven  in  the  morning,  studying  a 
volume  of  Lardner.  I  own  this  to  have  been  a  strain 
of  abstraction  beyond  my  reach.  I  used  to  admire 
how  he  sidled  along,  keeping  clear  of  secular  con- 
tacts. An  illiterate  encounter  with  a  porter's  knot, 
or  a  bread  basket,  would  have  quickly  put  to  flight  all 
the  theology  I  am  master  of,  and  have  left  me  worse 
than  indifferent  to  the  five  points. 

There  is  a  class  of  street- readers,  whom  I  can  never 
contemplate  without  affection  —  the  poor  gentry,  who, 
not  having  wherewithal  to  buy  or  hire  a  book,  filch  a 
little  learning  at  the  open  stalls  —  the  owner,  with  his 
hard  eye,  casting  envious  looks  at  them  all  the  while, 
and  thinking  when  they  will  have  done.  Venturing 
tenderly,  page  after  page,  expecting  every  moment 
when  he  shall  interpose  his  interdict,  and  yet  unable 
to  deny  themselves  the  gratification,  they  "  snatch  a 
fearful  joy."  Martin  B — ,  in  this  way,  by  daily  frag- 
ments, got  through  two  volumes  of  Clarissa,  when  the 


48  DETACHED   THOUGHTS. 

stall-keeper  damped  his  laudable  ambition,  by  asking 
him  (it  was  in  his  younger  days)  whether  he  meant 
to  purchase  the  work.  M.  declares,  that  under  no 
circumstances  of  his  life  did  he  ever  peruse  a  book 
with  half  the  satisfaction  which  he  took  in  those  un- 
easy snatches.  A  quaint  poetess  of  our  day  has  moral- 
ised upon  this  subject  in  two  very  touching  but  homely 
stanzas. 

I  saw  a  boy  with  eager  eye 

Open  a  book  upon  a  stall. 

And  read,  as  he  'd  devour  it  all ; 

"Which  when  the  stall-man  did  espy, 

Soon  to  the  boy  I  heard  him  call, 

"  You,  Sir,  you  never  buy  a  book. 

Therefore  in  one  you  shall  not  look." 

The  boy  pass'd  slowly  on,  and  with  a  sigh 

He  wish'd  he  never  had  been  taught  to  read, 

Then  of  the  old  churl's  books  he  should  have  had  no  need. 

Of  sufferings  the  poor  have  many, 

"Which  never  can  the  rich  annoy ; 

I  soon  perceiv'd  another  boy, 

"Who  look'd  as  if  he  'd  not  had  any 

Food,  for  that  day  at  least  —  enjoy 

The  sight  of  cold  meat  m  a  tavern  larder. 

This  boy's  case,  then  thought  I,  is  st  rely  harder, 

Thus  hungry,  longing,  thus  without  a  penny. 

Beholding  choice  of  dainty-dressed  meat : 

No  wonder  if  he  wish  he  ne'er  had  learn'd  to  eat. 


THE   OLD   MARGATE   HOY. 


I  AM  fond  of  passing  my  vacations  (I  believe  I  have 
said  so  before)  at  one  or  other  of  the  Universities. 
Next  to  these  my  choice  would  fix  me  at  some  woody 
spot,  such  as  the  neighbourhood  of  Henley  affords  in 
abundance,  upon  the  banks  of  my  beloved  Thames. 
But  somehow  or  other  my  cousin  contrives  to  wheedle 
me  once  in  three  or  four  seasons  to  a  watering  place. 
Old  attachments  cling  to  her  in  spite  of  experience. 
We  have  been  dull  at  Worthing  one  summer,  duller 
at  Brighton  another,  dullest  at  Eastboum  a  third,  and 
are  at  this  moment  doing  dreary  penance  at  —  Hast- 
ings !  —  and  all  because  we  were  happy  many  years 
ago  for  a  brief  week  at  —  Margate.  That  was  our 
first  sea-side  experiment,  and  many  circumstances 
combined  to  make  it  the  most  agreeable  holyday  of 
my  Hfe.  We  had  neither  of  us  seen  the  sea,  and  we 
had  never  been  from  home  so  long  together  in 
company. 

Can  I  forget  thee,  thou  old  Margate  Hoy,  with  thy 
weather-beaten,  sun-burnt  captain,  and  his  rough  ac- 


5o  THE  OLD  MARGATE  HOY. 

commodations  —  ill  exchanged  for  the  foppery  and 
fresh-water  niceness  of  the  modern  steam  packet? 
To  the  wmds  and  waves  thou  committedst  thy  goodly 
freightage,  and  didst  ask  no  aid  of  magic  fumes,  and 
spells,  and  boiling  cauldrons.  With  the  gales  of 
heaven  thou  wentest  swimmingly;  or,  when  it  was 
their  pleasure,  stoodest  still  with  sailor-like  patience. 
Thy  course  was  natural,  not  forced,  as  in  a  hot-bed; 
nor  didst  thou  go  poisoning  the  breath  of  ocean  with 
sulphureous  smoke  —  a  great  sea-chimsera,  chimney- 
ing and  furnacing  the  deep ;  or  liker  to  that  fire-god 
parching  up  Scamander. 

Can  I  forget  thy  honest,  yet  slender  crew,  with 
their  coy  reluctant  responses  (yet  to  the  suppression 
of  anything  like  contempt)  to  the  raw  questions, 
which  we  of  the  great  city  would  be  ever  and  anon 
putting  to  them,  as  to  the  uses  of  this  or  that  strange 
naval  implement?  'Specially  can  I  forget  thee,  thou 
happy  medium,  thou  shade  of  refuge  between  us  and 
them,  conciliating  interpreter  of  their  skill  to  our  sim- 
plicity, comfortable  ambassador  between  sea  and 
land  !  —  whose  sailor- trowsers  did  not  more  convin- 
cingly assure  thee  to  be  an  adopted  denizen  of  the 
former,  than  thy  white  cap,  and  whiter  apron  over 
them,  with  thy  neat-fingered  practice  in  thy  culinary 
vocation,  bespoke  thee  to  have  been  of  inland  nurture 
heretofore  —  a  master  cook  of  Eastcheap?  How 
busily   didst   thou   ply   thy   multifarious   occupation. 


THE  OLD  MARGATE   HOY.  51 

cook,  mariner,  attendant,  chamberlain;  here,  there, 
like  another  Ariel,  flaming  at  once  about  all  parts  of 
the  deck,  yet  with  kindlier  ministrations  —  not  to 
assist  the  tempest,  but,  as  if  touched  with  a  kindred 
sense  of  our  infirmities,  to  soothe  the  qualms  which 
that  untried  motion  might  haply  raise  in  our  crude 
land-fancies.  And  when  the  o'er-washing  billows 
drove  us  below  deck  (for  it  was  far  gone  in  October, 
and  we  had  stiff  and  blowing  weather)  how  did  thy 
officious  ministerings,  still  catering  for  our  comfort, 
with  cards,  and  cordials,  and  thy  more  cordial  con- 
versation, alleviate  the  closeness  and  the  confinement 
of  thy  else  (truth  to  say)  not  very  savoury,  nor  very 
inviting  little  cabin  ! 

With  these  additaments  to  boot,  we  had  on  board 
a  fellow-passenger,  whose  discourse  in  verity  might 
have  beguiled  a  longer  voyage  than  we  meditated, 
and  have  made  mirth  and  wonder  abound  as  far  as 
the  Azores.  He  was  a  dark,  Spanish  complexioned 
young  man,  remarkably  handsome,  with  an  officer- 
like assurance,  and  an  insuppressible  volubility  of  as- 
sertion. He  was,  in  fact,  the  greatest  liar  I  had  met 
with  then,  or  since.  He  was  none  of  your  hesitating, 
half-story  tellers  (a  most  painful  description  of  mor- 
tals) who  go  on  sounding  your  belief,  and  only  giving 
you  as  much  as  they  see  you  can  swallow  at  a  time  — 
the  nibbling  pickpockets  of  your  patience  —  but  one 
who   committed    downright,    day-light   depredations 


52  THE   OLD   MARGATE   HOY. 

upon  his  neighbour's  faith.  He  did  not  stand  shiver- 
ing upon  the  brink,  but  was  a  hearty  thorough-paced 
liar,  and  plunged  at  once  into  the  depths  of  your 
creduHty.  I  partly  beheve,  he  made  pretty  sure  of 
his  company.  Not  many  rich,  not  many  wise,  or 
learned,  composed  at  that  time  the  common  stowage 
of  a  Margate  packet.  We  were,  I  am  afraid,  a  set  of 
as  unseasoned  Londoners  (let  our  enemies  give  it  a 
worse  name)  as  Aldermanbury,  or  Watling  street,  at 
that  time  of  day  could  have  supplied.  There  might 
be  an  exception  or  two  among  us,  but  I  scorn  to  make 
any  invidious  distinctions  among  such  a  jolly,  com- 
panionable ship's  company,  as  those  were  whom  I 
sailed  with.  Something  too  must  be  conceded  to  the 
Genius  Loci.  Had  the  confident  fellow  told  us  half 
the  legends  on  land,  which  he  favoured  us  with  on 
the  other  element,  I  flatter  myself  the  good  sense  of 
most  of  us  would  have  revolted.  But  we  were  in  a 
new  world,  with  everything  unfamiliar  about  us,  and 
the  time  and  place  disposed  us  to  the  reception  of 
any  prodigious  marvel  whatsoever.  Time  has  obliter- 
ated from  my  memory  much  of  his  wild  fablings ;  and 
the  rest  would  appear  but  dull,  as  written,  and  to  be 
read  on  shore.  He  had  been  Aid-de-camp  (among 
other  rare  accidents  and  fortunes)  to  a  Persian  prince, 
and  at  one  blow  had  stricken  off  the  head  of  the 
King  of  Carimania  on  horseback.  He,  of  course, 
married  the  Prince's  daughter.     I   forget   what  un- 


THE   OLD   MARGATE    HOY.  53 

lucky  turn  in  the  politics  of  that  court,  combining 
with  the  loss  of  his  consort,  was  the  reason  of  his 
quitting  Persia ;  but  with  the  rapidity  of  a  magician 
he  transported  himself,  along  with  his  hearers,  back 
to  England,  where  we  still  found  him  in  the  confi- 
dence of  great  ladies.  There  was  some  story  of  a 
Princess  —  Elizabeth,  if  I  remember  —  having  in- 
trusted to  his  care  an  extraordinary  casket  of  jewels, 
upon  some  extraordinary  occasion  —  but  as  I  am 
not  certain  of  the  name  or  circumstance  at  this  dis- 
tance of  time,  I  must  leave  it  to  the  Royal  daughters 
of  England  to  settle  the  honour  among  themselves  in 
private.  I  cannot  call  to  mind  half  his  pleasant  won- 
ders ;  but  I  perfectly  remember,  that  in  the  course 
of  his  travels  he  had  seen  a  phoenix ;  and  he  obH- 
gingly  undeceived  us  of  the  vulgar  error,  that  there  is 
but  one  of  that  species  at  a  time,  assuring  us  that 
they  were  not  uncommon  in  some  parts  of  Upper 
Egypt.  Hitherto  he  had  found  the  most  implicit 
listeners.  His  dreaming  fancies  had  transported  us 
beyond  the  "  ignorant  present."  But  when  (still 
hardying  more  and  more  in  his  triumphs  over  our 
simplicity),  he  went  on  to  affirm  that  he  had  actually 
sailed  through  the  legs  of  the  Colossus  at  Rhodes,  it 
really  became  necessary  to  make  a  stand.  And  here 
I  must  do  justice  to  the  good  sense  and  intrepidity 
of  one  of  our  party,  a  youth,  that  had  hitherto  been 
one  of  his  most  deferential  auditors,  who,  from   his 


54  THE   OLD   MARGATE   HOY. 

recent  reading,  made  bold  to  assure  the  gentleman, 
that  there  must  be  some  mistake,  as  "  the  Colossus  in 
question  had  been  destroyed  long  since  :  "  to  whose 
opinion,  delivered  with  all  modesty,  our  hero  was 
obliging  enough  to  concede  thus  much,  that  "  the 
figure  was  indeed  a  little  damaged."  This  was  the 
only  opposition  he  met  with,  and  it  did  not  at  all 
seem  to  stagger  him,  for  he  proceeded  with  his  fables, 
which  the  same  youth  appeared  to  swallow  with  still 
more  complacency  than  ever,  —  confirmed,  as  it  were, 
by  the  extreme  candour  of  that  concession.  With 
these  prodigies  he  wheedled  us  on  till  we  came  in 
sight  of  the  Reculvers,  which  one  of  our  own  company 
(having  been  the  voyage  before)  immediately  recog- 
nising, and  pointing  out  to  us,  was  considered  by  us 
as  no  ordinary  seaman. 

All  this  time  sat  upon  the  edge  of  the  deck  quite  a 
different  character.  It  was  a  lad,  apparently  very 
poor,  very  infirm,  and  very  patient.  His  eye  was 
ever  on  the  sea,  with  a  smile  :  and,  if  he  caught  now 
and  then  some  snatches  of  these  wild  legends,  it  was 
by  accident,  and  they  seemed  not  to  concern  him. 
The  waves  to  him  whispered  more  pleasant  stories. 
He  was  as  one,  being  with  us,  but  not  of  us.  He 
heard  the  bell  of  dinner  ring  without  stirring ;  and 
when  some  of  us  pulled  out  our  private  stores  —  our 
cold  meat  and  our  salads  —  he  produced  none,  and 
seemed  to  want  none.     Only  a  solitary  biscuit  he  had 


THE  OLD   MARGATE   HOY.  55 

laid  in ;  provision  for  the  one  or  two  days  and  nights, 
to  which  these  vessels  then  were  oftentimes  obliged 
to  prolong  their  voyage.  Upon  a  nearer  acquaintance 
with  him,  which  he  seemed  neither  to  court  nor  de- 
cline, we  learned  that  he  was  going  to  Margate,  with 
the  hope  of  being  admitted  into  the  Infirmary  there 
for  sea-bathing.  His  disease  was  a  scrofula,  which 
appeared  to  have  eaten  all  over  him.  He  expressed 
great  hopes  of  a  cure  :  and  when  we  asked  him, 
whether  he  had  any  friends  where  he  was  going,  he 
replied,  "  he  had  no  friends." 

These  pleasant,  and  some  mournful  passages,  with 
the  first  sight  of  the  sea,  co-operating  with  youth,  and 
a  sense  of  holydays,  and  out-of-door  adventure,  to 
me  that  had  been  pent  up  in  populous  cities  for 
many  months  before,  —  have  left  upon  my  mind  the 
fragrance  as  of  summer  days  gone  by,  bequeathing 
nothing  but  their  remembrance  for  cold  and  wintry 
hours  to  chew  upon. 

Will  it  be  thought  a  digression  (it  may  spare  some 
unwelcome  comparisons),  if  I  endeavour  to  account 
for  the  dissatisfaction  which  I  have  heard  so  many 
persons  confess  to  have  felt  (as  I  did  myself  feel  in 
part  on  this  occasion) ,  at  the  sight  of  the  sea  for  the 
first  time  ?  I  think  the  reason  usually  given  —  refer- 
ring to  the  incapacity  of  actual  objects  for  satisfying 
our  preconceptions  of  them  —  scarcely  goes  deep 
enough  into  the  question.     Let  the  same  person  see 


56  THE   OLD   MARGATE   HOY. 

a  lion,  an  elephant,  a  mountain,  for  the  first  time  in 
his  life,  and  he  shall  perhaps  feel  himself  a  little  morti- 
fied. The  things  do  not  fill  up  that  space,  which  the 
idea  of  them  seemed  to  take  up  in  his  mind.  But 
they  have  still  a  correspondency  to  his  first  notion, 
and  in  time  grow  up  to  it,  so  as  to  produce  a  very 
similar  impression  :  enlarging  themselves  (if  I  may 
say  so)  upon  familiarity.  But  the  sea  remains  a  dis- 
appointment. —  Is  it  not,  that  in  the  latter  we  had 
expected  to  behold  (absurdly,  I  grant,  but,  I  am 
afraid,  by  the  law  of  imagination  unavoidably)  not  a 
definite  object,  as  those  wild  beasts,  or  that  mountain 
compassable  by  the  eye,  but  all  the  sea  at  once,  the 

COMMENSURATE  ANl'AGONIST  OF  THE  EARTH  !       I  do   not 

say  we  tell  ourselves  so  much,  but  the  craving  of  the 
mind  is  to  be  satisfied  with  nothing  less.  I  will  sup- 
pose the  case  of  a  young  person  of  fifteen  (as  I  then 
was)  knowing  nothing  of  the  sea,  but  from  descrip- 
tion. He  comes  to  it  for  the  first  time  —  all  that  he 
has  been  reading  of  it  all  his  life,  and  that  the  most 
enthusiastic  part  of  life,  —  all  he  has  gathered  from 
narratives  of  wandering  seamen  ;  what  he  has  gained 
from  true  voyages,  and  what  he  cherishes  as  credu- 
lously from  romance  and  poetry;  crowding  their 
images,  and  exacting  strange  tributes  from  expecta- 
tion.—  He  thinks  of  the  great  deep,  and  of  those 
who  go  down  unto  it ;  of  its  thousand  isles,  and  of 
the  vast  continents  it  washes;    of  its  receiving  the 


THE  OLD  MARGATE  HOY.  57 

mighty  Plata,  or  Orellana,  into  its  bosom,  without  dis- 
turbance, or  sense  of  augmentation ;  of  Biscay  swells, 
and  the  mariner 

For  many  a  day,  and  many  a  dreadful  night, 
Incessant  labouring  round  the  stormy  Cape; 

of  fatal  rocks,  and  the  "  still-vexed  Bermoothes ;  "  of 
great  whirlpools,  and  the  water- spout ;  of  sunken  ships, 
and  sumless  treasures  swallowed  up  in  the  unrestoring 
depths :  of  fishes  and  quaint  monsters,  to  which  all 
that  is  terrible  on  earth  — 

Be  but  as  buggs  to  frighten  babes  withal, 
Compared  with  the  creatures  in  the  sea's  entral ; 

of  naked  savages,  and  Juan  Fernandez ;  of  pearls,  and 
shells  ;  of  coral  beds,  and  of  enchanted  isles ;  of  mer- 
maids' grots  — 

I  do  not  assert  that  in  sober  earnest  he  expects  to 
be  shown  all  these  wonders  at  once,  but  he  is  under 
the  tyranny  of  a  mighty  faculty,  which  haunts  him 
with  confused  hints  and  shadows  of  all  these ;  and 
when  the  actual  object  opens  first  upon  him,  seen  (in 
tame  weather  too  most  likely)  from  our  unromantic 
coasts  —  a  speck,  a  slip  of  sea- water,  as  it  shows  to 
him  —  what  can  it  prove  but  a  very  unsatisfying  and 
even  diminutive  entertainment?  Or  if  he  has  come 
to  it  from  the  mouth  of  a  river,  was  it  much  more 
than  the  river  widening?  and,  even  out  of  sight  of 
land,  what  had  he  but  a  flat  watery  horizon  about 


58  THE  OLt)   MARGATE   HOY. 

him,  nothing  comparable  to  the  vast  o'er-curtaining 
sky,  his  familiar  object,  seen  daily  without  dread  or 
amazement?  —  Who,  in  similar  circumstances,  has 
not  been  tempted  to  exclaim  with  Charoba,  in  the 
poem  of  Gebir,  — 

Is  this  the  mighty  ocean  ?  —  is  this  all  ? 

I  love  town,  or  country  ;  but  this  detestable  Cinque 
Port  is  neither.  I  hate  these  scrubbed  shoots,  thrust- 
ing out  their  starved  foliage  from  between  the  horrid 
fissures  of  dusty  innutritions  rocks ;  which  the  ama- 
teur calls  "  verdure  to  the  edge  of  the  sea."  I  require 
woods,  and  they  show  me  stunted  coppices.  I  cry 
out  for  the  water-brooks,  and  pant  for  fresh  streams, 
and  inland  murmurs.  I  cannot  stand  all  day  on  the 
naked  beach,  watching  the  capricious  hues  of  the  sea, 
shifting  like  the  colours  of  a  dying  mullet.  I  am 
tired  of  looking  out  at  the  windows  of  this  island- 
prison.  I  would  fain  retire  into  the  interior  of  my 
cage.  While  I  gaze  upon  the  sea,  I  want  to  be  on  it, 
over  it,  across  it.  It  binds  me  in  with  chains,  as  of 
iron.  My  thoughts  are  abroad.  I  should  not  so  feel 
in  Staffordshire.  There  is  no  home  for  me  here. 
There  is  no  sense  of  home  at  Hastings.  It  is  a  place 
of  fugitive  resort,  an  heterogeneous  assemblage  of  sea- 
mews  and  stock- brokers,  Amphitrites  of  the  town,  and 
misses  that  coquet  with  the  Ocean.  If  it  were  what 
it  was  in  its  primitive  shape,  and  what  it  ought  to 


THE  OLD   MARGATE  HOY.  59 

have  remained,  a  fair  honest  fishing-town,  and  no 
more,  it  were  something  —  with  a  few  straggling  fish- 
ermen's huts  scattered  about,  artless  as  its  cliffs,  and 
with  their  materials  filched  from  them,  it  were  some- 
thing. I  could  abide  to  dwell  with  Meschek;  to 
assort  with  fisher-swains,  and  smugglers.  There  are, 
or  I  dream  there  are,  many  of  this  latter  occupation 
here.  Their  faces  become  the  place.  I  like  a  smug- 
gler. He  is  the  only  honest  thief.  He  robs  nothing 
but  the  revenue,  —  an  abstraction  I  never  greatly 
cared  about.  I  could  go  out  with  them  in  their 
mackarel  boats,  or  about  their  less  ostensible  busi- 
ness, with  some  satisfaction.  I  can  even  tolerate 
those  poor  victims  to  monotony,  who  from  day  to 
day  pace  along  the  beach,  in  endless  progress  and 
recurrence,  to  watch  their  illicit  countrymen  —  towns- 
folk or  brethren  perchance  —  whistling  to  the  sheath- 
ing and  unsheathing  of  their  cutlasses  (their  only 
solace),  who  under  the  mild  name  of  preventive 
service,  keep  up  a  legitimated  civil  warfare  in  the 
deplorable  absence  of  a  foreign  one,  to  show  their 
detestation  of  run  hollands,  and  zeal  for  old  England. 
But  it  is  the  visitants  from  town,  that  come  here  to 
say  that  they  have  been  here,  with  no  more  relish  of 
the  sea  than  a  pond  perch,  or  a  dace  might  be  sup- 
posed to  have,  that  are  my  aversion.  I  feel  like  a 
foolish  dace  in  these  regions,  and  have  as  little  toler- 
ation for  myself  here,  as  for  them.     What  can  they 


60  THE   OLD   MARGATE   HOY. 

want  here?  if  they  had  a  true  reHsh  of  the  ocean, 
why  have  they  brought  all  this  land  luggage  with 
them  ?  or  why  pitch  their  civilised  tents  in  the  desert  ? 
What  mean  these  scanty  book-rooms  —  marine  libra- 
ries as  they  entitle  them  —  if  the  sea  were,  as  they 
would  have  us  believe,  a  book  *'  to  read  strange 
matter  in?"  what  are  their  foolish  concert-rooms,  if 
they  come,  as  they  would  fain  be  thought  to  do,  to 
listen  to  the  music  of  the  waves?  All  is  false  and 
hollow  pretension.  They  come,  because  it  is  the 
fashion,  and  to  spoil  the  nature  of  the  place.  They 
are  mostly,  as  I  have  said,  stock-brokers ;  but  I  have 
watched  the  better  sort  of  them  —  now  and  then,  an 
honest  citizen  (of  the  old  stamp) ,  in  the  simplicity  of 
his  heart,  shall  bring  down  his  wife  and  daughters,  to 
taste  the  sea  breezes.  I  always  know  the  date  of 
their  arrival.  It  is  easy  to  see  it  in  their  countenance. 
A  day  or  two  they  go  wandering  on  the  shingles,  pick- 
ing up  cockle-shells,  and  thinking  them  great  things ; 
but,  in  a  poor  week,  imagination  slackens :  they 
begin  to  discover  that  cockles  produce  no  pearls,  and 
then  —  O  then  !  —  if  I  could  interpret  for  the  pretty 
creatures  (I  know  they  have  not  the  courage  to  con- 
fess it  themselves)  how  gladly  would  they  exchange 
their  sea-side  rambles  for  a  Sunday  walk  on  the  green- 
sward of  their  accustomed  Twickenham  meadows  ! 

I  would  ask  of  one  of  these  sea-charmed  emigrants, 
who  think  they  truly  love  the  sea,  with  its  wild  usages, 


THE  OLD   MARGATE   HOY.  6 1 

what  would  their  feelings  be,  if  some  of  the  unsophis- 
ticated aborigines  of  this  place,  encouraged  by  their 
courteous  questionings  here,  should  venture,  on  the 
faith  of  such  assured  sympathy  between  them,  to  re- 
turn the  visit,  and  come  up  to  see  —  London.  I  must 
imagine  them  with  their  fishing-tackle  on  their  back, 
as  we  carry  our  town  necessaries.  What  a  sensation 
would  it  cause  in  Lothbury  ?  What  vehement  laughter 
would  it  not  excite  among 

The  daughters  of  Cheapside,  and  wives  of  Lombard-street. 

I  am  sure  that  no  town-bred,  or  inland- born  sub- 
jects, can  feel  their  true  and  natural  nourishment  at 
these  sea-places.  Nature,  where  she  does  not  mean 
us  for  mariners  and  vagabonds,  bids  us  stay  at  home. 
The  salt  foam  seems  to  nourish  a  spleen.  I  am  not 
half  so  good-natured  as  by  the  milder  waters  of  my 
natural  river.  I  would  exchange  these  sea-gulls  for 
swans,  and  scud  a  swallow  for  ever  about  the  banks  of 
Thamesis. 


THE   CONVALESCENT. 


A  PRETTY  severe  fit  of  indisposition  which,  under 
the  name  of  a  nervous  fever,  has  made  a  prisoner  of 
me  for  some  weeks  past,  and  is  but  slowly  leaving  me, 
has  reduced  me  to  an  incapacity  of  reflecting  upon 
any  topic  foreign  to  itself.  Expect  no  healthy  con- 
clusions from  me  this  month,  reader ;  I  can  offer  you 
only  sick  men's  dreams. 

And  truly  the  whole  state  of  sickness  is  such ;  for 
what  else  is  it  but  a  magnificent  dream  for  a  man  to 
lie  a-bed,  and  draw  day-light  curtains  about  him ; 
and,  shutting  out  the  sun,  to  induce  a  total  oblivion 
of  all  the  works  which  are  going  on  under  it?  To 
become  insensible  to  all  the  operations  of  life,  except 
the  beatings  of  one  feeble  pulse  ? 

If  there  be  a  regal  solitude,  it  is  a  sick  bed.  How 
the  patient  lords  it  there  !  what  caprices  he  acts  with- 
out control !  how  king-like  he  sways  his  pillow  —  tum- 
bling, and  tossing,  and  shifting,  and  lowering,  and 
thumping,  and  flatting,  and  moulding  it,  to  the  ever 
varying  requisitions  of  his  throbbing  temples. 


THE    CONVALESCENT.  63 

He  changes  sides  oftener  than  a  poUtician.  Now 
he  Hes  full  length,  then  half-length,  obliquely,  trans- 
versely, head  and  feet  quite  across  the  bed;  and 
none  accuses  him  of  tergiversation.  Within  the  four 
curtains  he  is  absolute.     They  are  his  Mare  Clausum. 

How  sickness  enlarges  the  dimensions  of  a  man's 
self  to  himself!  he  is  his  own  exclusive  object. 
Supreme  selfishness  is  inculcated  upon  him  as  his 
only  duty.  'T  is  the  Two  Tables  of  the  Law  to  him. 
He  has  nothing  to  think  of  but  how  to  get  well. 
What  passes  out  of  doors,  or  within  them,  so  he  hear 
not  the  jarring  of  them,  affects  him  not. 

A  little  while  ago  he  was  greatly  concerned  in  the 
event  of  a  law -suit,  which  was  to  be  the  making  or 
the  marring  of  his  dearest  friend.  He  was  to  be  seen 
trudging  about  upon  this  man's  errand  to  fifty  quarters 
of  the  town  at  once,  jogging  this  witness,  refreshing 
that  solicitor.  The  cause  was  to  come  on  yesterday. 
He  is  absolutely  as  indifferent  to  the  decision,  as  if  it 
were  a  question  to  be  tried  at  Pekin.  Peradventure 
from  some  whispering,  going  on  about  the  house,  not 
intended  for  his  hearing,  he  picks  up  enough  to  make 
him  understand,  that  things  went  cross-grained  in 
the  Court  yesterday,  and  his  friend  is  ruined.  But 
the  word  ''  friend,"  and  the  word  "  ruin,"  disturb  him 
no  more  than  so  much  jargon.  He  is  not  to  think  of 
any  thing  but  how  to  get  better. 

What  a  world  of  foreign  cares  are  merged  in  that 
absorbing  consideration  ! 


64  THE   CONVALESCENT. 

He  has  put  on  the  strong  armour  of  sickness,  he  is 
wrapped  in  the  callous  hide  of  suffering;  he  keeps 
his  sympathy,  like  some  curious  vintage,  under  trusty 
lock  and  key,  for  his  own  use  only. 

He  lies  pitying  himself,  honing  and  moaning  to 
himself;  he  yearneth  over  himself;  his  bowels  are 
even  melted  within  him,  to  think  what  he  suffers ;  he 
is  not  ashamed  to  weep  over  himself. 

He  is  for  ever  plotting  how  to  do  some  good  to 
himself;  studying  little  stratagems  and  artificial  alle- 
viations. 

He  makes  the  most  of  himself;  dividing  himself, 
by  an  allowable  fiction,  into  as  many  distinct  indi- 
viduals, as  he  hath  sore  and  sorrowing  members. 
Sometimes  he  meditates  —  as  of  a  thing  apart  from 
him  —  upon  his  poor  aching  head,  and  that  dull  pain 
which,  dozing  or  waking,  lay  in  it  all  the  past  night 
like  a  log,  or  palpable  substance  of  pain,  not  to  be 
removed  without  opening  the  very  scull,  as  it  seemed, 
to  take  it  thence.  Or  he  pities  his  long,  clammy,  at- 
tenuated fingers.  He  compassionates  himself  all  over ; 
and  his  bed  is  a  very  discipline  of  humanity,  and 
tender  heart. 

He  is  his  own  sympathiser ;  and  instinctively  feels 
that  none  can  so  well  perform  that  office  for  him. 
He  cares  for  few  spectators  to  his  tragedy.  Only 
that  punctual  face  of  the  old  nurse  pleases  him,  that 
announces  his  broths,  and  his  cordials.     He  likes  it 


THE   CONVALESCENT.  6^ 

because  it  is  so  unmoved,  and  because  he  can  pour 
forth  his  feverish  ejaculations  before  it  as  unreservedly 
as  to  his  bed-post. 

To  the  world's  business  he  is  dead.  He  under- 
stands not  what  the  callings  and  occupations  of 
mortals  are ;  only  he  has  a  glimmering  conceit  of 
some  such  thing,  when  the  doctor  makes  his  daily 
call :  and  even  in  the  lines  of  that  busy  face  he  reads 
no  multiplicity  of  patients,  but  solely  conceives  of 
himself  as  f/ie  sick  vian.  To  what  other  uneasy 
couch  the  good  man  is  hastening,  when  he  slips  out 
of  his  chamber,  folding  up  his  thin  douceur  so  care- 
fully for  fear  of  rustling  —  is  no  speculation  which 
he  can  at  present  entertain.  He  thinks  only  of  the 
regular  return  of  the  same  phenomenon  at  the  same 
hour  to-morrow. 

Household  rumours  touch  him  not.  Some  faint 
murmur,  indicative  of  life  going  on  within  the  house, 
soothes  him,  while  he  knows  not  distinctly  what  it  is. 
He  is  not  to  know  any  thing,  not  to  think  of  any 
thing.  Servants  gliding  up  or  down  the  distant  stair- 
case, treading  as  upon  velvet,  gently  keep  his  ear 
awake,  so  long  as  he  troubles  not  himself  further 
than  with  some  feeble  guess  at  their  errands.  Ex- 
acter  knowledge  would  be  a  burthen  to  him  :  he  can 
just  endure  the  pressure  of  conjecture.  He  opens 
his  eye  faintly  at  the  dull  stroke  of  the  muffled 
knocker,  and  closes  it  again  without  asking  "who 
5 


66  THE  CONVALESCENT. 

was  it  ? "  He  is  flattered  by  a  general  notion  that 
inquiries  are  making  after  him,  but  he  cares  not  to 
know  the  name  of  the  inquirer.  In  the  general 
stillness,  and  awful  hush  of  the  house,  he  lies  in 
state,  and  feels  his  sovereignty. 

To  be  sick  is  to  enjoy  monarchal  prerogatives. 
Compare  the  silent  tread,  and  quiet  ministry,  almost 
by  the  eye  only,  with  which  he  is  served  —  with  the 
careless  demeanour,  the  unceremonious  goings  in  and 
out  (slapping  of  doors,  or  leaving  them  open)  of  the 
very  same  attendants,  when  he  is  getting  a  little 
better  —  and  you  will  confess,  that  from  the  bed  of 
sickness  (throne  let  me  rather  call  it)  to  the  elbow 
chair  of  convalescence,  is  a  fall  from  dignity,  amount- 
ing to  a  deposition. 

How  convalescence  shrinks  a  man  back  to  his 
pristine  stature  !  where  is  now  the  space,  which  he 
occupied  so  lately,  in  his  own,  in  the  family's  eye? 
The  scene  of  his  regalities,  his  sick  room,  which 
was  his  presence  chamber,  where  he  lay  and  acted 
his  despotic  fancies  —  how  is  it  reduced  to  a  com- 
mon bed-room  !  The  trimness  of  the  very  bed  has 
something  petty  and  unmeaning  about  it.  It  is 
made  every  day.  How  unlike  to  that  wavy,  many- 
furrowed,  oceanic  surface,  which  it  presented  so  short 
a  time  since,  when  to  make  it  was  a  service  not  to 
be  thought  of  at  oftener  than  three  or  four  day 
revolutions,   when   the   patient   was   with    pain   and 


THE  CONVALESCENT.  6j 

grief  to  be  lifted  for  a  little  while  out  of  it,  to  submit  to 
the  encroachments  of  unwelcome  neatness,  and  de- 
cencies which  his  shaken  frame  deprecated ;  then 
to  be  lifted  into  it  again,  for  another  three  or  four 
days'  respite,  to  flounder  it  out  of  shape  again,  while 
every  fresh  furrow  was  a  historical  record  of  some 
shifting  posture,  some  uneasy  turning,  some  seeking 
for  a  little  ease ;  and  the  shrunken  skin  scarce  told 
a  truer  story  than  the  crumpled  coverlid. 

Hushed  are  those  mysterious  sighs  —  those  groans 

—  so  much  more  awful,  while  we  knew  not  from 
what  caverns  of  vast  hidden  suffering  they  proceeded. 
The  Lernean  pangs  are  quenched.  The  riddle  of 
sickness  is  solved ;  and  Philoctetes  is  become  an 
ordinary  personage. 

Perhaps  some  relic  of  the  sick  man's  dream  of 
greatness  survives  in  the  still  lingering  visitations  of 
the  medical  attendant.  But  how  is  he  too  changed 
with  every  thing  else  !  Can  this  be  he  —  this  man 
of  news  —  of  chat  —  of  anecdote  —  of  every  thing 
but  physic  —  can  this  be  he,  who  so  lately  came  be- 
tween the  patient  and  his  cruel  enemy,  as  on  some 
solemn  embassy  from  Nature,  erecting  herself  into 
a  high  mediating  party  ?  —  Pshaw  !  't  is  some  old 
woman. 

Farewell  with  him  all  that  made  sickness  pompous 

—  the  spell  that  hushed  the  household  —  the  desart- 
like  stillness,  felt  throughout  its  inmost  chambers  — 


68  THE  CONVALESCENT. 

the  mute  attendance  —  the  inquiry  by  looks  —  the 
still  softer  delicacies  of  self- attention  —  the  sole  and 
single  eye  of  distemper  alonely  fixed  upon  itself — 
world-thoughts  excluded  —  the  man  a  world  unto 
himself —  his  own  theatre  — 

What  a  speck  is  he  dwindled  into  ! 
In  this  flat  swamp  of  convalescence,  left  by  the 
ebb  of  sickness,  yet  far  enough  from  the  terra  firma 
of  established  health,  your  note,  dear  Editor,  reached 
me,  requesting  —  an  article.  In  Articulo  Mortis, 
thought  I ;  but  it  is  something  hard  —  and  the 
quibble,  wretched  as  it  was,  relieved  me.  The  sum- 
mons, unseasonable  as  it  appeared,  seemed  to  link 
me  on  again  to  the  petty  businesses  of  life,  which  I 
had  lost  sight  of;  a  gentle  call  to  activity,  however 
trivial ;  a  wholesome  weaning  from  that  preposterous 
dream  of  self-absorption  —  the  puffy  state  of  sick- 
ness—  in  which  I  confess  to  have  lain  so  long,  in- 
sensible to  the  magazines  and  monarchies,  of  the 
world  alike ;  to  its  laws,  and  to  its  literature.  The 
hypochondriac  flatus  is  subsiding ;  the  acres,  which 
in  imagination  I  had  spread  over  —  for  the  sick  man 
swells  in  the  sole  contemplation  of  his  single  suffer- 
ings, till  he  becomes  a  Tityus  to  himself — are  wast- 
ing to  a  span ;  and  for  the  giant  of  self-importance, 
which  I  was  so  lately,  you  have  me  once  again  in 
my  natural  pretensions  —  the  lean  and  meagre  figure 
of  your  insignificant  Essayist. 


SANITY   OF  TRUE   GENIUS. 


So  far  from  the  position  holding  true,  that  great 
wit  (or  genius,  in  our  modern  way  of  speaking), 
has  a  necessary  alHance  with  insanity,  the  greatest 
wits,  on  the  contrary,  will  ever  be  found  to  be  the 
sanest  writers.  It  is  impossible  for  the  mind  to 
conceive  of  a  mad  Shakspeare.  The  greatness  of 
wit,  by  which  the  poetic  talent  is  here  chiefly  to  be 
understood,  manifests  itself  in  the  admirable  balance 
of  all  the  faculties.  Madness  is  the  disproportionate 
straining  or  excess  of  any  one  of  them.  "  So  strong 
a  wit,"  says  Cowley,  speaking  of  a  poetical  friend, 

" did  Nature  to  him  frame. 

As  all  things  but  his  judgment  overcame, 

His  judgment  like  the  heavenly  moon  did  show, 

Tempering  that  mighty  sea  below." 

The  ground  of  the  mistake  is,  that  men,  finding  in 
the  raptures  of  the  higher  poetry  a  condition  of 
exaltation,   to  which  they  have  no  parallel  in  their 


70  SANITY    OF   TRUE   GENIUS. 

own  experience,  besides  the  spurious  resemblance 
of  it  in  dreams  and  fevers,  impute  a  state  of  dreami- 
ness and  fever  to  the  poet.  But  the  true  poet  dreams 
being  awake.  He  is  not  possessed  by  his  subject, 
but  has  dominion  over  it.  In  the  groves  of  Eden 
he  walks  familiar  as  in  his  native  paths.  He  ascends 
the  empyrean  heaven,  and  is  not  intoxicated.  He 
treads  the  burning  marl  without  dismay;  he  wins 
his  flight  without  self-loss  through  realms  of  chaos 
"  and  old  night."  Or  if,  abandoning  himself  to  that 
severer  chaos  of  a  "  human  mind  untuned,"  he  is 
content  awhile  to  be  mad  with  Lear,  or  to  hate  man- 
kind (a  sort  of  madness)  with  Timon,  neither  is 
that  madness,  nor  this  misanthropy,  so  unchecked, 
but  that,  —  never  letting  the  reins  of  reason  wholly 
go,  while  most  he  seems  to  do  so,  —  he  has  his  better 
genius  still  whispering  at  his  ear,  with  the  good  ser- 
vant Kent  suggesting  saner  counsels,  or  with  the 
honest  steward  Flavins  recommending  kindlier  reso- 
lutions. Where  he  seems  most  to  recede  from  hu- 
manity, he  will  be  found  the  truest  to  it.  From 
beyond  the  scope  of  Nature  if  he  summon  possible 
existences,  he  subjugates  them  to  the  law  of  her  con- 
sistency. He  is  beautifully  loyal  to  that  sovereign 
directress,  even  when  he  appears  most  to  betray  and 
desert  her.  His  ideal  tribes  submit  to  policy;  his 
very  monsters  are  tamed  to  his  hand,  even  as  that 
wild  sea-brood,  shepherded  by  Proteus.     He  tames, 


SANITY   OF  TRUE  GENIUS.  71 

and  he  clothes  them  with  attributes  of  flesh  and 
blood,  till  they  wonder  at  themselves,  like  Indian 
Islanders  forced  to  submit  to  European  vesture. 
Caliban,  the  Witches,  are  as  true  to  the  laws  of  their 
own  nature  (ours  with  a  difference),  as  Othello, 
Hamlet,  and  Macbeth.  Herein  the  great  and  the 
Httle  wits  are  differenced ;  that  if  the  latter  wander 
ever  so  little  from  nature  or  actual  existence,  they 
lose  themselves,  and  their  readers.  Their  phantoms 
are  lawless  ;  their  visions  nightmares.  They  do  not 
create,  which  implies  shaping  and  consistency.  Their 
imaginations  are  not  active  —  for  to  be  active  is  to 
call  something  into  act  and  form  —  but  passive,  as 
men  in  sick  dreams.  For  the  super- natural,  or  some- 
thing super-added  to  what  we  know  of  nature,  they 
give  you  the  plainly  non-natural.  And  if  this  were 
all,  and  that  these  mental  hallucinations  were  dis- 
coverable only  in  the  treatment  of  subjects  out  of 
nature,  or  transcending  it,  the  judgment  might  with 
some  plea  be  pardoned  if  it  ran  riot,  and  a  little 
wantonized  :  but  even  in  the  describing  of  real  and 
every  day  life,  that  which  is  before  their  eyes,  one 
of  these  lesser  wits  shall  more  deviate  from  nature 
—  show  more  of  that  inconsequence,  which  has  a 
natural  alliance  with  frenzy,  —  than  a  great  genius 
in  his  "maddest  fits,"  as  Withers  somewhere  calls 
them.  We  appeal  to  any  one  that  is  acquainted 
with  the  common  run  of  Lane's  novels,  —  as  they 


72  SANITY    OF  TRUE   GENIUS. 

existed  some  twenty  or  thirty  years  back,  —  those 
scanty  intellectual  viands  of  the  whole  female  read- 
ing public,  till  a  happier  genius  arose,  and  expelled 
for  ever  the  innutritions  phantoms,  —  whether  he  has 
not  found  his  brain  more  "  betossed,"  his  memory 
more  puzzled,  his  sense  of  when  and  where  more 
confounded,  among  the  improbable  events,  the  in- 
coherent incidents,  the  inconsistent  characters,  or 
no-characters,  of  some  third-rate  love  intrigue  — 
where  the  persons  shall  be  a  Lord  Glendamour  and 
a  Miss  Rivers,  and  the  scene  only  alternate  between 
Bath  and  Bond-street — a  more  bewildering  dreami- 
ness induced  upon  him,  than  he  has  felt  wandering 
over  all  the  fairy  grounds  of  Spenser.  In  the  pro- 
ductions we  refer  to,  nothing  but  names  and  places 
is  familiar ;  the  persons  are  neither  of  this  world  nor 
of  any  other  conceivable  one ;  an  endless  string  of 
activities  without  purpose,  of  purposes  destitute  of 
motive  :  —  we  meet  phantoms  in  our  known  walks  ; 
fantasques  only  christened.  In  the  poet  we  have 
names  which  announce  fiction ;  and  we  have  abso- 
lutely no  place  at  all,  for  the  things  and  persons  of 
the  Fairy  Queen  prate  not  of  their  "whereabout." 
But  in  their  inner  nature,  and  the  law  of  their  speech 
and  actions,  we  are  at  home  and  upon  acquainted 
ground.  The  one  turns  life  into  a  dream ;  the  other 
to  the  wildest  dreams  gives  the  sobrieties  of  every 
day  occurrences.     By  what  subtile  art  of  tracing  the 


SANITY    OF   TRUE  GENIUS.  73 

mental  processes  it  is  effected,  we  are  not  philoso- 
phers enough  to  explain,  but  in  that  wonderful  epi- 
sode of  the  cave  of  Mammon,  in  which  the  Money 
God  appears  first  in  the  lowest  form  of  a  miser,  is 
then  a  worker  of  metals,  and  becomes  the  god  of  all 
the  treasures  of  the  world ;  and  has  a  daughter, 
Ambition,  before  whom  all  the  world  kneels  for  fa- 
vours —  with  the  Hesperian  fruit,  the  waters  of  Tan- 
talus, with  Pilate  washing  his  hands  vainly,  but  not 
impertinently,  in  the  same  stream  —  that  we  should 
be  at  one  moment  in  the  cave  of  an  old  hoarder  of 
treasures,  at  the  next  at  the  forge  of  the  Cyclops, 
in  a  palace  and  yet  in  hell,  all  at  once,  with  the 
shifting  mutations  of  the  most  rambling  dream,  and 
our  judgment  yet  all  the  time  awake,  and  neither 
able  nor  willing  to  detect  the  fallacy,  —  is  a  proof  of 
that  hidden  sanity  which  still  guides  the  poet  in  his 
widest  seeming-aberrations. 

It  is  not  enough  to  say  that  the  whole  episode  is  a 
copy  of  the  mind's  conceptions  in  sleep ;  it  is,  in 
some  sort  —  but  what  a  copy !  Let  the  most  ro- 
mantic of  us,  that  has  been  entertained  all  night 
with  the  spectacle  of  some  wild  and  magnificent 
vision,  recombine  it  in  the  morning,  and  try  it  by 
his  waking  judgment.  That  which  appeared  so  shift- 
ing, and  yet  so  coherent,  while  that  faculty  was  pas- 
sive, when  it  comes  under  cool  examination,  shall 
appear  so   reasonless  and   so   unlinked,  that  we  are 


74  SANITY   OF  TRUE  GENIUS. 

ashamed  to  have  been  so  deluded;  and  to  have 
taken,  though  but  in  sleep,  a  monster  for  a  god. 
But  the  transitions  in  this  episode  are  every  whit  as 
violent  as  in  the  most  extravagant  dream,  and  yet 
the  waking  judgment  ratifies  them. 


CAPTAIN   JACKSON. 


Among  the  deaths  in  our  obituary  for  this  month,  I 
observe  with  concern  "At  his  cottage  on  the  Bath 
road,  Captain  Jackson."  The  name  and  attribution 
are  common  enough ;  but  a  feeUng  Uke  reproach 
persuades  me,  that  this  could  have  been  no  other  in 
fact  than  my  dear  old  friend,  who  some  five-and- 
twenty  years  ago  rented  a  tenement,  which  he  was 
pleased  to  dignify  with  the  appellation  here  used, 
about  a  mile  from  Westboum  Green.  Alack,  how 
good  men,  and  the  good  turns  they  do  us,  slide  out 
of  memory,  and  are  recalled  but  by  the  surprise  of 
some  such  sad  memento  as  that  which  now  lies 
before  us ! 

He  whom  I  mean  was  a  retired  half-pay  officer, 
with  a  wife  and  two  grown-up  daughters,  whom  he 
maintained  with  the  port  and  notions  of  gentle- 
women upon  that  slender  professional  allowance. 
Comely  girls  they  were  too. 

And  was  I  in  danger  of  forgetting  this  man?  — 
his  cheerful  suppers  —  the  noble  tone  of  hospitality, 


"je  CAPTAIN   JACKSON. 

when  first  you  set  your  foot  in  the  cottage — the 
anxious  ministerings  about  you,  where  little  or  noth- 
ing (God  knows)  was  to  be  ministered.  —  Althea's 
horn  in  a  poor  platter  —  the  power  of  self-enchant- 
ment, by  which,  in  his  magnificent  wishes  to  enter- 
tain you,  he  multiplied  his  means  to  bounties. 

You  saw  with  your  bodily  eyes  indeed  what  seemed 
a  bare  scrag  —  cold  savings  from  the  foregone  meal  — 
remnant  hardly  sufficient  to  send  a  mendicant  from 
the  door  contented.  But  in  the  copious  will  —  the 
revelling  imagination  of  your  host  —  the  "  mind,  the 
mind,  Master  Shallow,"  whole  beeves  were  spread 
before  you  —  hecatombs  —  no  end  appeared  to  the 
profusion. 

It  was  the  widow's  cruse  —  the  loaves  and  fishes ; 
carving  could  not  lessen  nor  helping  diminish  it  — 
the  stamina  were  left  —  the  elemental  bone  still 
flourished,  divested  of  its  accidents. 

"  Let  us  live  while  we  can,"  methinks  I  hear  the 
open-handed  creature  exclaim ;  "  while  we  have,  let 
us  not  want,"  "here  is  plenty  left;"  "want  for 
nothing"  —  with  many  more  such  hospitable  sayings, 
the  spurs  of  appetite,  and  old  concomitants  of  smoak- 
ing  boards,  and  feast-oppressed  chargers.  Then 
sliding  a  slender  ratio  of  Single  Gloucester  upon  his 
wife's  plate,  or  the  daughter's,  he  would  convey  the 
remnant  rind  into  his  own,  with  a  merry  quirk  of 
"  the  nearer  the  bone,"  &c.,  and  declaring  that  he 


CAPTAIN  JACKSON.  *jj 

universally  preferred  the  outside.  For  we  had  our 
table  distinctions,  you  are  to  know,  and  some  of  us 
in  a  manner  sate  above  the  salt.  None  but  his 
guest  or  guests  dreamed  of  tasting  flesh  luxuries  at 
night,  the  fragments  were  vere  hospitibus  sacra.  But 
of  one  thing  or  another  there  was  always  enough, 
and  leavings :  only  he  would  sometimes  finish  the 
remainder  crust,  to  show  that  he  wished  no  savings. 

Wine  we  had  none;  nor,  except  on  very  rare  oc- 
casions, spirits ;  but  the  sensation  of  wine  was  there. 
Some  thin  kind  of  ale  I  remember  —  "  British  bev- 
erage," he  would  say!  "Push  about,  my  boys;" 
*'  Drink  to  your  sweethearts,  girls."  At  every  meagre 
draught  a  toast  must  ensue,  or  a  song.  All  the  forms 
of  good  liquor  were  there,  with  none  of  the  effects 
wanting.  Shut  your  eyes,  and  you  would  swear  a 
capacious  bowl  of  punch  was  foaming  in  the  centre, 
with  beams  of  generous  Port  or  Madeira  radiating  to 
it  from  each  of  the  table  corners.  You  got  flustered, 
without  knowing  whence ;  tipsy  upon  words ;  and 
reeled  under  the  potency  of  his  unperforming  Bac- 
chanalian encouragements. 

We  had  our  songs  —  "  Why,  Soldiers,  Why  "  — 
and  the  "  British  Grenadiers "  —  in  which  last  we 
were  all  obliged  to  bear  chorus.  Both  the  daughters 
sang.  Their  proficiency  was  a  nightly  theme  —  the 
masters  he  had  given  them  —  the  "  no-expence  " 
which  he  spared   to  accomplish  them  in  a  science 


78  CAPTAIN  JACKSON. 

"  SO  necessary  to  young  women."  But  then  —  they 
could  not  sing  "  without  the  instrument." 

Sacred,  and  by  me,  never-to-be  violated,  Secrets 
of  Poverty  !  Should  I  disclose  your  honest  aims  at 
grandeur,  your  makeshift  efforts  of  magnificence? 
Sleep,  sleep,  with  all  thy  broken  keys,  if  one  of  the 
bunch  be  extant ;  thrummed  by  a  thousand  ances- 
tral thumbs ;  dear,  cracked  spinnet  of  dearer  Louisa  ! 
Without  mention  of  mine,  be  dumb,  thou  thin  ac- 
companier  of  her  thinner  warble  !  A  veil  be  spread 
over  the  dear  delighted  face  of  the  well-deluded 
father,  who  now  haply  Hstening  to  cherubic  notes, 
scarce  feels  sincerer  pleasure  than  when  she  awak- 
ened thy  time-shaken  chords  responsive  to  the  twit- 
terings of  that  slender  image  of  a  voice. 

We  were  not  without  our  literary  talk  either.  It 
did  not  extend  far,  but  as  far  as  it  went,  it  was  good. 
It  was  bottomed  well ;  had  good  grounds  to  go  upon. 
In  the  cottage  was  a  room,  which  tradition  authenti- 
cated to  have  been  the  same  in  which  Glover,  in  his 
occasional  retirements,  had  penned  the  greater  part 
of  his  Leonidas.  This  circumstance  was  nightly 
quoted,  though  none  of  the  present  inmates,  that  I 
could  discover,  appeared  ever  to  have  met  with  the 
poem  in  question.  But  that  was  no  matter.  Glover 
had  written  there,  and  the  anecdote  was  pressed  into 
the  account  of  the  family  importance.  It  diffused 
a  learned  air  through  the  apartment,  the  little  side 


CAPTAIN  JACKSON.  79 

casement  of  which  (the  poet's  study  window),  open- 
ing upon  a  superb  view  as  far  as  to  the  pretty  spire 
of  Harrow,  over  domains  and  patrimonial  acres,  not 
a  rood  nor  square  yard  whereof  our  host  could  call 
his  own,  yet  gave  occasion  to  an  immoderate  expan- 
sion of — vanity  shall  I  call  it?  —  in  his  bosom,  as 
he  showed  them  in  a  glowing  summer  evening.  It 
was  all  his,  he  took  it  all  in,  and  communicated 
rich  portions  of  it  to  his  guests.  It  was  a  part 
of  his  largess,  his  hospitality;  it  was  going  over 
his  grounds;  he  was  lord  for  the  time  of  showing 
them,  and  you  the  implicit  lookers-up  to  his  mag- 
nificence. 

He  was  a  juggler,  who  threw  mists  before  your 
eyes  —  you  had  no  time  to  detect  his  fallacies.  He 
would  say**' hand  me  the  silver  sugar  tongs;"  and, 
before  you  could  discover  it  was  a  single  spoon,  and 
that //<2/(f^,  he  would  disturb  and  captivate  your  im- 
agination by  a  misnomer  of  "  the  urn  "  for  a  tea 
kettle ;  or  by  calling  a  homely  bench  a  sofa.  Rich 
men  direct  you  to  their  furniture,  poor  ones  divert 
you  from  it ;  he  neither  did  one  nor  the  other,  but 
by  simply  assuming  that  everything  was  handsome 
about  him,  you  were  positively  at  a  demur  what  you 
did,  or  did  not  see,  at  the  cottage.  With  nothing  to 
live  on,  he  seemed  to  live  on  everything.  He  had 
a  stock  of  wealth  in  his  mind ;  not  that  which  is 
properly  termed   Content,  for  in  truth  he  was  not  to 


8o  CAPTAIN  JACKSON. 

be  contained  at  all,  but  overflowed  all  bounds  by  the 
force  of  a  magnificent  self-delusion. 

Enthusiasm  is  catching ;  and  even  his  wife,  a  sober 
native  of  North  Britain,  who  generally  saw  things 
more  as  they  were,  was  not  proof  against  the  con- 
tinual collision  of  his  credulity.  Her  daughters  were 
rational  and  discreet  young  women;  in  the  main, 
perhaps,  not  insensible  to  their  true  circumstances. 
I  have  seen  them  assume  a  thoughtful  air  at  times. 
But  such  was  the  preponderating  opulence  of  his 
fancy,  that  I  am  persuaded,  not  for  any  half  hour 
together,  did  they  ever  look  their  own  prospects 
fairly  in  the  face.  There  was  no  resisting  the  vortex 
of  his  temperament.  His  riotous  imagination  con- 
jured up  handsome  settlements  before  their  eyes, 
which  kept  them  up  in  the  eye  of  the  world  too, 
and  seem  at  last  to  have  realised  themselves ;  for 
they  both  have  married  since,  I  am  told,  more 
than  respectably. 

It  is  long  since,  and  my  memory  waxes  dim  on 
some  subjects,  or  I  should  wish  to  convey  some 
notion  of  the  manner  in  which  the  pleasant  creature 
described  the  circumstances  of  his  own  wedding- 
day.  I  faintly  remember  something  of  a  chaise  and 
four,  in  which  he  made  his  entry  into  Glasgow  on 
that  morning  to  fetch  the  bride  home,  or  carry  her 
thither,  I  forget  which.  It  so  completely  made  out 
the  stanza  of  the  old  ballad  — • 


CAPTAIN  JACKSON.  8 1 

When  we  came  down  through  Glasgow  town, 

We  were  a  comely  sight  to  see ; 
My  love  was  clad  in  black  velvet, 

And  I  myself  in  cramasie. 

I  suppose  it  was  the  only  occasion,  upon  which  his 
own  actual  splendour  at  all  corresponded  with  the 
world's  notions  on  that  subject.  In  homely  cart,  or 
travelling  caravan,  by  whatever  humble  vehicle  they 
chanced  to  be  transported  in  less  prosperous  days, 
the  ride  through  Glasgow  came  back  upon  his  fancy, 
not  as  a  humiliating  contrast,  but  as  a  fair  occasion 
for  reverting  to  that  one  day's  state.  It  seemed  an 
"  equipage  etem  "  from  which  no  power  of  fate  or 
fortune,  once  mounted,  had  power  thereafter  to 
dislodge  him. 

There  is  some  merit  in  putting  a  handsome  face 
upon  indigent  circumstances.  To  bully  and  swagger 
away  the  sense  of  them  before  strangers,  may  not 
be  always  discommendable.  Tibbs,  and  Bobadil, 
even  when  detected,  have  more  of  our  admiration 
than  contempt.  But  for  a  man  to  put  the  cheat 
upon  himself;  to  play  the  Bobadil  at  home;  and, 
steeped  in  poverty  up  to  the  lips,  to  fancy  himself 
all  the  while  chin-deep  in  riches,  is  a  strain  of  con- 
stitutional philosophy,  and  a  mastery  over  fortune, 
which  was  reserved  for  my  old  friend  Captain 
Jackson. 


THE   SUPERANNUATED    MAN. 


Sera  tamen  respexit 
Libertas.  Virgil. 

A  Clerk  I  was  in  London  gay. 

O'Keefe. 


If  peradventure,  Reader,  it  has  been  thy  lot  to 
waste  the  golden  years  of  thy  life  —  thy  shining 
youth  —  in  the  irksome  confinement  of  an  office  ;  to 
have  thy  prison  days  prolonged  through  middle  age 
down  to  decrepitude  and  silver  hairs,  without  hope 
of  release  or  respite;  to  have  lived  to  forget  that 
there  are  such  things  as  holidays,  or  to  remember 
them  but  as  the  prerogatives  of  childhood ;  then, 
and  then  only,  will  you  be  able  to  appreciate  my 
deliverance. 

It  is  now  six  and  thirty  years  since  I  took  my  seat 
at  the  desk  in  Mincing-lane.  Melancholy  was  the 
transition  at  fourteen  from  the  abundant  play-time, 
and   the   frequently- intervening   vacations   of  school 


THE   SUPERANNUATED   MAN.  83 

days,  to  the  eight,  nine,  and  sometimes  ten  hours' 
a-day  attendance  at  a  counting-house.  But  time 
partially  reconciles  us  to  anything.  I  gradually  be- 
came content  —  doggedly  contented,  as  wild  ani- 
mals in  cages. 

It  is  true  I  had  my  Sundays  to  myself;  but  Sun- 
days, admirable  as  the  institution  of  them  is  for  pur- 
poses of  worship,  are  for  that  very  reason  the  very 
worst  adapted  for  days  of  unbending  and  recreation. 
In  particular,  there  is  a  gloom  for  me  attendant 
upon  a  city  Sunday,  a  weight  in  the  air.  I  miss  the 
cheerful  cries  of  London,  the  music,  and  the  ballad- 
singers  —  the  buzz  and  stirring  murmur  of  the  streets. 
Those  eternal  bells  depress  me.  The  closed  shops 
repel  me.  Prints,  pictures,  all  the  glittering  and 
endless  succession  of  knacks  and  gewgaws,  and  os- 
tentatiously displayed  wares  of  tradesmen,  which 
make  a  week-day  saunter  through  the  less  busy 
parts  of  the  metropolis  so  delightful  —  are  shut  out. 
No  book-stalls  deliciously  to  idle  over  —  No  busy 
faces  to  recreate  the  idle  man  who  contemplates 
them  ever  passing  by  —  the  very  face  of  business  a 
charm  by  contrast  to  his  temporary  relaxation  from 
it.  Nothing  to  be  seen  but  unhappy  countenances 
—  or  half-happy  at  best  —  of  emancipated  'pren- 
tices and  little  trade sfolks,  with  here  and  there  a 
servant  maid  that  has  got  leave  to  go  out,  who,  slav- 
ing all  the  week,  with  the  habit  has  lost  almost  the 


84  THE  SUPERANNUATED   MAN. 

capacity  of  enjoying  a  free  hour;  and  livelily  ex- 
pressing the  hollowness  of  a  day's  pleasuring.  The 
very  strollers  in  the  fields  on  that  day  look  anything 
but  comfortable. 

But  besides  Sundays  I  had  a  day  at  Easter,  and  a 
day  at  Christmas,  with  a  full  week  in  the  summer  to 
go  and  air  myself  in  my  native  fields  of  Hertford- 
shire. This  last  was  a  great  indulgence ;  and  the 
prospect  of  its  recurrence,  I  believe,  alone  kept  me 
up  through  the  year,  and  made  my  durance  toler- 
able. But  when  the  week  came  round,  did  the 
glittering  phantom  of  the  distance  keep  touch  with 
me?  or  rather  was  it  not  a  series  of  seven  uneasy 
days,  spent  in  restless  pursuit  of  pleasure,  and  a 
wearisome  anxiety  to  find  out  how  to  make  the 
most  of  them?  Where  was  the  quiet,  where  the 
promised  rest?  Before  I  had  a  taste  of  it,  it  was 
vanished.  I  was  at  the  desk  again,  counting  upon 
the  fifty-one  tedious  weeks  that  must  intervene  be- 
fore such  another  snatch  would  come.  Still  the 
prospect  of  its  coming  threw  something  of  an  illu- 
mination upon  the  darker  side  of  my  captivity. 
Without  it,  as  I  have  said,  I  could  scarcely  have 
sustained  my  thraldom. 

Independently  of  the  rigours  of  attendance,  I  have 
ever  been  haunted  with  a  sense  (perhaps  a  mere 
caprice)  of  incapacity  for  business.  This,  during 
my  latter  years,  had  increased  to  such  a  degree,  that 


THE  SUPERANNUATED  MAN.  85 

It  was  visible  in  all  the  lines  of  my  countenance. 
My  health  and  my  good  spirits  flagged.  I  had  per- 
petually a  dread  of  some  crisis,  to  which  I  should 
be  found  unequal.  Besides  my  daylight  servitude, 
I  served  over  again  all  night  in  my  sleep,  and  would 
awake  with  terrors  of  imaginary  false  entries,  errors 
in  my  accounts,  and  the  like.  I  was  fifty  years  of 
age,  and  no  prospect  of  emancipation  presented 
itself.  I  had  grown  to  my  desk,  as  it  were ;  and 
the  wood  had  entered  into  my  soul. 

My  fellows  in  the  office  would  sometimes  rally  me 
upon  the  trouble  legible  in  my  countenance ;  but  I 
did  not  know  that  it  had  raised  the  suspicions  of  any 
of  my  employers,  when,  on  the  5th  of  last  month,  a 

day  ever  to  be  remembered  by  me,  L ,  the  junior 

partner  in  the  firm,  calling  me  on  one  side,  directly 
taxed  me  with  my  bad  looks,  and  frankly  inquired 
the  cause  of  them.  So  taxed,  I  honestly  made  con- 
fession of  my  infirmity,  and  added  that  I  was  afraid 
I  should  eventually  be  obhged  to  resign  his  service. 
He  spoke  some  words  of  course  to  hearten  me,  and 
there  the  matter  rested.  A  whole  week  I  remained 
labouring  under  the  impression  that  I  had  acted  im- 
prudently in  my  disclosure ;  that  I  had  foolishly 
given  a  handle  against  myself,  and  had  been  antici- 
pating my  own  dismissal.  A  week  passed  in  this 
manner,  the  most  anxious  one,  I  verily  believe,  in 
my  whole  life,  when  on  the  evening  of  the   12th  of 


86  THE   SUPERANNUATED   MAN. 

April,  just  as  I  was  about  quitting  my  desk  to  go 
home  (it  might  be  about  eight  o'clock)  I  received 
an  awful  summons  to  attend  the  presence  of  the 
whole  assembled  firm  in  the  formidable  back  par- 
lour. I  thought,  now  my  time  is  surely  come,  I 
have  done  for  myself,  I  am  going  to  be  told   that 

they   have  no   longer   occasion   for   me.     L ,   I 

could  see,  smiled  at  the  terror  I  was  in,  which  was 
a  little  relief  to  me,  —  when  to  my  utter  astonish- 
ment  B ,    the    eldest    partner,    began   a   formal 

harangue  to  me  on  the  length  of  my  services,  my 
very  meritorious  conduct  during  the  whole  of  the 
time  (the  deuce,  thought  I,  how  did  he  find  out 
that  ?  I  protest  I  never  had  the  confidence  to  think 
as  much).  He  went  on  to  descant  on  the  expedi- 
ency of  retiring  at  a  certain  time  of  life  (how  my 
heart  panted  !)  and  asking  me  a  few  questions  as 
to  the  amount  of  my  own  property,  of  which  I  have 
a  little,  ended  with  a  proposal,  to  which  his  three 
partners  nodded  a  grave  assent,  that  I  should  ac- 
cept from  the  house,  which  I  had  served  so  well,  a 
pension  for  life  to  the  amount  of  two- thirds  of  my 
accustomed  salary  —  a  magnificent  offer  !  I  do  not 
know  what  I  answered  between  surprise  and  grati- 
tude, but  it  was  understood  that  I  accepted  their 
proposal,  and  I  was  told  that  I  was  free  from  that 
hour  to  leave  their  service.  I  stammered  out  a  bow, 
and  at  just  ten  minutes  after  eight  I  went  home  — 


THE    SUPERANNUATED    MAN.  8/ 

for  ever.  This  noble  benefit  —  gratitude  forbids  me 
to  conceal  their  names  —  I  owe  to  the  kindness  of 
the  most  munificent  firm  in  the  world  —  the  house 
of  Boldero,  Merryweather,  Bosanquet,  and  Lacy. 

Esto  perpetua  / 

For  the  first  day  or  two  I  felt  stunned,  over- 
whelmed. I  could  only  apprehend  my  felicity;  I 
was  too  confused  to  taste  it  sincerely.  I  wandered 
about,  thinking  I  was  happy,  and  knowing  that  I  was 
not.  I  was  in  the  condition  of  a  prisoner  in  the  old 
Bastile,  suddenly  let  loose  after  a  forty  years'  confine- 
ment. I  could  scarce  trust  myself  with  myself.  It 
was  like  passing  out  of  Time  into  Eternity — for  it  is 
a  sort  of  Eternity  for  a  man  to  have  his  Time  all  to 
himself.  It  seemed  to  me  that  I  had  more  time  on 
my  hands  than  I  could  ever  manage.  From  a  poor 
man,  poor  in  Time,  I  was  suddenly  lifted  up  into  a  vast 
revenue ;  I  could  see  no  end  of  my  possessions ;  I 
wanted  some  steward,  or  judicious  bailiff,  to  manage 
my  estates  in  Time  for  me.  And  here  let  me  caution 
persons  grown  old  in  active  business,  not  lightly,  nor 
without  weighing  their  own  resources,  to  forego  their 
customary  employment  all  at  once,  for  there  may  be 
danger  in  it.  I  feel  it  by  myself,  but  I  know  that  my 
resources  are  sufficient ;  and  now  that  those  first  giddy 
raptures  have  subsided,  I  have  a  quiet  home-feeling 
of  the   blessedness  of  my  condition.     I   am   in  no 


88  THE    SUPERANNUATED    MAN. 

hurry.  Having  all  holidays,  I  am  as  though  I  had 
none.  If  Time  hung  heavy  upon  me,  I  could  walk  it 
away ;  but  I  do  not  walk  all  day  long,  as  I  used  to  do 
in  those  old  transient  holidays,  thirty  miles  a  day,  to 
make  the  most  of  them.  If  Time  were  troublesome, 
I  could  read  it  away,  but  I  do  not  read  in  that  violent 
measure,  with  which,  having  no  Time  my  own  but 
candle-light  Time,  I  used  to  weary  out  my  head  and 
eye-sight  in  by-gone  winters.  I  walk,  read  or  scribble 
(as  now)  just  when  the  fit  seizes  me.  I  no  longer 
hunt  after  pleasure ;  I  let  it  come  to  me.  I  am  like 
the  man 


That's  born,  and  has  his  years  come  to  him, 


In  some  green  desart. 

"  Years,"  you  will  say  !  "  what  is  this  superannuated 
simpleton  calculating  upon  !  He  has  already  told  us, 
he  is  past  fifty." 

I  have  indeed  lived  nominally  fifty  years,  but  de- 
duct out  of  them  the  hours  which  I  have  lived  to  other 
people,  and  not  to  myself,  and  you  will  find  me  still 
a  young  fellow.  For  that  is  the  only  true  Time,  which 
a  man  can  properly  call  his  own,  that  which  he  has  all 
to  himself;  the  rest,  though  in  some  sense  he  may  be 
said  to  live  it,  is  other  people's  time,  not  his.  The 
remnant  of  my  poor  days,  long  or  short,  is  at  least 
multiplied  for  me  three-fold.  My  ten  next  years,  if 
I  stretch  so  far,  will  be  as  long  as  any  preceding 
thirty.     'T  is  a  fair  rule-of- three  sum. 


THE    SUPERANNUATED    MAN.  89 

Among  the  strange  fantasies  which  beset  me  at  the 
commencement  of  my  freedom,  and  of  which  all 
traces  are  not  yet  gone,  one  was,  that  a  vast  tract  of 
time  had  intervened  since  I  quitted  the  Counting 
House.  I  could  not  conceive  of  it  as  an  affair  of 
yesterday.  The  partners,  and  the  clerks,  with  whom 
I  had  for  so  many  years,  and  for  so  many  hours  in 
each  day  of  the  year,  been  closely  associated  —  being 
suddenly  removed  from  them  —  they  seemed  as  dead 
to  me..  There  is  a  fine  passage,  which  may  serve  to 
illustrate  this  fancy,  in  a  Tragedy  by  Sir  Robert 
Howard,  speaking  of  a  friend's  death  : 


'T  was  but  just  now  he  went  away ; 

I  have  not  since  had  time  to  shed  a  tear ; 
And  yet  the  distance  does  the  same  appear 
As  if  he  had  been  a  thousand  years  from  me. 
Time  takes  no  measure  in  Eternity. 

To  dissipate  this  awkward  feeling,  I  have  been  fain 
to  go  among  them  once  or  twice  since  ;  to  visit  my 
old  desk-fellows  —  my  co-brethren  of  the  quill  — 
that  I  had  left  below  in  the  state  militant.  Not  all 
the  kindness  with  which  they  received  me  could  quite 
restore  to  me  that  pleasant  famiharity,  which  I  had 
heretofore  enjoyed  among  them.  We  cracked  some 
of  our  old  jokes,  but  methought  they  went  off  but 
faintly.  My  old  desk  ;  the  peg  where  I  hung  my  hat, 
were  appropriated  to  another.  I  knew  it  must  be, 
but  I  could  not  take  it  kindly.     D 1  take  me,  if 


90  THE    SUPERANNUATED    MAN. 

I  did  not  feel  some  remorse  —  beast,  if  I  had  not,  — 
at  quitting  my  old  compeers,  the  faithful  partners  of 
my  toils  for  six  and  thirty  years,  that  smoothed  for 
me  with  their  jokes  and  conundrums  the  ruggedness 
of  my  professional  road.  Had  it  been  so  rugged  then 
after  all?  or  was  I  a  coward  simply?  Well,  it  is  too 
late  to  repent ;  and  I  also  know,  that  these  sugges- 
tions are  a  common  fallacy  of  the  mind  on  such  oc- 
casions. But  my  heart  smote  me.  I  had  violently 
broken  the  bands  betwixt  us.  It  was  at  least  not 
courteous.  I  shall  be  some  time  before  I  get  quite 
reconciled  to  the  separation.  Farewell,  ©Id  cronies, 
yet  not  for  long,  for  again  and  again  I  will  come 
among   ye,    if  I    shall   have   your    leave.      Farewell 

Ch ,    dry,    sarcastic,    and    friendly  !       Do , 

mild,    slow    to   move,    and    gentlemanly !      PI , 

officious  to  do,  and  to  volunteer,  good  services  !  — 
and  thou,  thou  dreary  pile,  fit  mansion  for  a  Gresham 
or  a  Whittington  of  old,  stately  House  of  Merchants ; 
with  thy  labyrinthine  passages,  and  light-excluding, 
pent-up  offices,  where  candles  for  one  half  the  year 
suppHed  the  place  of  the  sun's  light ;  unhealthy 
contributor  to  my  weal,  stern  fosterer  of  my  Hving, 
farewell !  In  thee  remain,  and  not  in  the  obscure 
collection  of  some  wandering  bookseller,  my  "  works  !  " 
There  let  them  rest,  as  I  do  from  my  labours,  piled 
on  thy  massy  shelves,  more  MSS.  in  folio  than  ever 
Aquinas  left,  and  full  as  useful !  My  mantle  I  be- 
queath among  ye. 


THE   SUPERANNUATED  MAN.  91 

A  fortnight  has  passed  since  the  date  of  my  first 
communication.  At  that  period  I  was  approaching 
to  tranquilUty,  but  had  not  reached  it.  I  boasted  of 
a  calm  indeed,  but  it  was  comparative  only.  Some- 
thing of  the  first  flutter  was  left ;  an  unsettUng  sense 
of  novelty  j  the  dazzle  to  weak  eyes  of  unaccustomed 
light.  I  missed  my  old  chains,  forsooth,  as  if  they 
had  been  some  necessary  part  of  my  apparel.  I  was  a 
poor  Carthusian,  from  strict  cellular  discipUne  suddenly 
by  some  revolution  returned  upon  the  world.  I  am 
now  as  if  I  had  never  been  other  than  my  own  master. 
It  is  natural  to  me  to  go  where  I  please,  to  do  what  I 
please.  I  find  myself  at  eleven  o'clock  in  the  day  in 
Bond-street,  and  it  seems  to  me  that  I  have  been 
sauntering  there  at  that  very  hour  for  years  past.  I 
digress  into  Soho,  to  explore  a  book- stall.  Methmks 
I  have  been  thirty  years  a  collector.  There  is  noth- 
ing strange  nor  new  in  it.  I  find  myself  before  a  fine 
picture  in  a  morning.  Was  it  ever  otherwise  ?  What 
is  become  of  Fish-street  Hill?  Where  is  Fenchurch- 
street?  Stones  of  old  Mincing-lane  which  I  have 
worn  with  my  daily  pilgrimage  for  six  and  thirty 
years,  to  the  footsteps  of  what  toil-worn  clerk  are 
your  everlasting  flints  now  vocal  ?  I  indent  the  gayer 
flags  of  Pall  Mall.  It  is  Change  time,  and  I  am 
strangely  among  the  Elgin  marbles.  It  was  no  hyper- 
bole when  I  ventured  to  compare  the  change  in  my 
condition  to  a  passing   into   another   world.     Time 


92  THE   SUPERANNUATED   MAN. 

stands  still  in  a  manner  to  me.  I  have  lost  all  dis- 
tinction of  season.  I  do  not  know  the  day  of  the 
week,  or  of  the  month.  Each  day  used  to  be  indi- 
vidually felt  by  me  in  its  reference  to  the  foreign  post 
days ;  in  its  distance  from,  or  propinquity  to,  the 
next  Sunday.  I  had  my  Wednesday  feelings,  my 
Saturday  nights'  sensations.  The  genius  of  each  day 
was  upon  me  distinctly  during  the  whole  of  it,  affect- 
ing my  appetite,  spirits,  &c.  The  phantom  of  the 
next  day,  with  the  dreary  five  to  follow,  sate  as  a  load 
upon  my  poor  Sabbath  recreations.  What  charm  has 
washed  that  Ethiop  white?  What  is  gone  of  Black 
Monday?  All  days  are  the  same.  Sunday  itself  — 
that  unfortunate  failure  of  a  holyday  as  it  too  often 
proved,  what  with  my  sense  of  its  fugitiveness,  and 
over-care  to  get  the  greatest  quantity  of  pleasure  out 
of  it  —  is  melted  down  into  a  week  day.  I  can  spare 
to  go  to  church  now,  without  grudging  the  huge 
cantle  which  it  used  to  seem  to  cut  out  of  the  holy- 
day.  I  have  Time  for  everything.  I  can  visit  a  sick 
friend.  I  can  interrupt  the  man  of  much  occupation 
when  he  is  busiest.  I  can  insult  over  him  with  an 
invitation  to  take  a  day's  pleasure  with  me  to  Windsor 
this  fine  May-morning.  It  is  Lucretian  pleasure  to 
behold  the  poor  drudges,  whom  I  have  left  behind  in 
the  world,  carking  and  caring ;  like  horses  in  a  mill, 
drudging  on  in  the  same  eternal  round  —  and  what  is 
it  all  for?     A  man  can  never  have  too  much  Time  to 


THE   SUPERANNUATED   MAN.  93 

himself,  nor  too  little  to  do.  Had  I  a  little  son,  I 
would  christen  him  Nothing-to-do  ;  he  should  do 
nothing.  Man,  I  verily  beHeve,  is  out  of  his  element 
as  long  as  he  is  operative.  I  am  altogether  for  the 
life  contemplative.  Will  no  kindly  earthquake  come 
and  swallow  up  those  accursed  cotton  mills?  Take 
me  that  lumber  of  a  desk  there,  and  bowl  it  down 

As  low  as  to  the  fiends. 

I  am  no  longer  *****  *^  clerk  to  the  Firm 
of  &c.  I  am  Retired  Leisure.  I  am  to  be  met  with 
in  trim  gardens.  I  am  already  come  to  be  known 
by  my  vacant  face  and  careless  gesture,  perambulating 
at  no  fixed  pace,  nor  with  any  settled  purpose.  I 
walk  about ;  not  to  and  from.  They  tell  me,  a  cer- 
tain cum  dignitate  air,  that  has  been  buried  so  long 
with  my  other  good  parts,  has  begun  to  shoot  forth  in 
my  person.  I  grow  into  gentility  perceptibly.  When 
I  take  up  a  newspaper,  it  is  to  read  the  state  of  the 
opera.  Opus  operatum  est.  I  have  done  all  that  I 
came  into  this  world  to  do.  I  have  worked  task  work, 
and  have  the  rest  of  the  day  to  myself. 


THE   GENTEEL  STYLE   IN   WRITING. 


It  is  an  ordinary  criticism,  that  my  Lord  Shaftesbury, 
and  Sir  William  Temple,  are  models  of  the  genteel 
style  in  writing.  We  should  prefer  saying  —  of  the 
lordly,  and  the  gentlemanly.  Nothing  can  be  more 
unlike  than  the  inflated  finical  rhapsodies  of  Shaftes- 
bury, and  the  plain  natural  chit-chat  of  Temple.  The 
man  of  rank  is  discernible  in  both  writers ;  but  in  the 
one  it  is  only  insinuated  gracefully,  in  the  other  it 
stands  out  offensively.  The  peer  seems  to  have 
written  with  his  coronet  on,  and  his  Earl's  mantle 
before  him ;  the  commoner  in  his  elbow  chair  and 
undress. — What  can  be  more  pleasant  than  the  way 
in  which  the  retired  statesman  peeps  out  in  the  essays, 
penned  by  the  latter  in  his  delightful  retreat  at  Shene  ? 
They  scent  of  Nimeguen,  and  the  Hague.  Scarce  an 
authority  is  quoted  under  an  ambassador.  Don  Fran- 
cisco de  Melo,  a  "  Portugal  Envoy  in  England,"  tells 
him  it  was  frequent  in  his  country  for  men,  spent  with 
age  or  other  decays,  so  as  they  could  not  hope  for 
above  a  year  or  two  of  life,  to  ship  themselves  away  in 


THE   GENTEEL  STYLE   IN   WRITING.        95 

a  Brazil  fleet,  and  after  their  arrival  there  to  go  on  a 
great  length,  sometimes  of  twenty  or  thirty  years,  or 
more,  by  the  force  of  that  vigour  they  recovered  with 
that  remove.  "Whether  such  an  effect  (Temple 
beautifully  adds)  might  grow  from  the  air,  or  the 
fruits  of  that  climate,  or  by  approaching  nearer  the 
sun,  which  is  the  fountain  of  light  and  heat,  when 
their  natural  heat  was  so  far  decayed :  or  whether 
the  piecing  out  of  an  old  man's  life  were  worth  the 
pains ;  I  cannot  tell :  perhaps  the  play  is  not  worth 
the  candle."  —  Monsieur  Pompone,  "  French  Ambas- 
sador in  his  (Sir  William's)  time  at  the  Hague,"  cer- 
tifies him,  that  in  his  life  he  had  never  heard  of  any 
man  in  France  that  arrived  at  a  hundred  years  of 
age  ;  a  limitation  of  life  which  the  old  gentleman  im- 
putes to  the  excellence  of  their  climate,  giving  them 
such  a  liveliness  of  temper  and  humour,  as  disposes  them 
to  more  pleasures  of  all  kinds  than  in  other  countries  ; 
and  moralises  upon  the  matter  very  sensibly.  The 
"  late  Robert  Earl  of  Leicester  "  furnishes  him  with  a 
story  of  a  Countess  of  Desmond,  married  out  of  Eng- 
land in  Edward  the  Fourth's  time,  and  who  lived  far 
in  King  James's  reign.  The  "  same  noble  person  " 
gives  him  an  account,  how  such  a  year,  in  the  same 
reign,  there  went  about  the  country  a  set  of  morrice- 
dancers,  composed  of  ten  men  who  danced,  a  Maid 
Marian,  and  a  tabor  and  pipe ;  and  how  these  twelve, 
one  with  another,   made  up   twelve   hundred  years. 


96         THE  GENTEEL   STYLE   IN   WRITING. 

"  It  was  not  so  much  (says  Temple)  that  so  many  in 
one  small  county  (Herefordshire)  should  live  to  that 
age,  as  that  they  should  be  in  vigour  and  in  humour 
to  travel  and  to  dance."  Monsieur  Zulichem,  one  of 
his  "  colleagues  at  the  Hague,"  informs  him  of  a  cure 
for  the  gout ;  which  is  confirmed  by  another  "  Envoy," 
Monsieur  Serinchamps,  in  that  town,  who  had  tried  it. 
—  Old  Prince  Maurice  of  Nassau  recommends  to  him 
the  use  of  hammocks  in  that  complaint ;  having  been 
allured  to  sleep,  while  suffering  under  it  himself,  by 
the  "  constant  motion  or  swinging  of  those  airy  beds." 
Count  Egmont,  and  the  Rhinegrave  who  "  was  killed 
last  summer  before  Maestricht,"  impart  to  him  their 
experiences. 

But  the  rank  of  the  writer  is  never  more  innocently 
disclosed,  than  where  he  takes  for  granted  the  com- 
pliments paid  by  foreigners  to  his  fruit-trees.  For 
the  taste  and  perfection  of  what  we  esteem  the  best, 
he  can  truly  say,  that  the  French,  who  have  eaten  his 
peaches  and  grapes  at  Shene  in  no  very  ill  year,  have 
generally  concluded  that  the  last  are  as  good  as  any 
they  have  eaten  in  France  on  this  side  Fontainbleau ; 
and  the  first  as  good  as  any  they  have  eat  in  Gascony. 
Italians  have  agreed  his  white  figs  to  be  as  good  as 
any  of  that  sort  in  Italy,  which  is  the  earHer  kind  of 
white  fig  there ;  for  in  the  later  kind  and  the  blue,  we 
cannot  come  near  the  warm  climates,  no  more  than  in 
the  Frontignac  or  Muscat  grape.     His  orange-trees  too, 


THE  GENTEEL  STYLE  IN   WRITING.        97 

are  as  large  as  any  he  saw  when  he  was  young  in  France, 
except  those  of  Fontainbleau,  or  what  he  has  seen  since 
in  the  Low  Countries ;  except  some  very  old  ones  of 
the  Prince  of  Orange's.  Of  grapes  he  had  the  honour 
of  bringing  over  four  sorts  into  England,  which  he 
enumerates,  and  supposes  that  they  are  all  by  this 
time  pretty  common  among  some  gardeners  in  his 
neighbourhood,  as  well  as  several  persons  of  quality ; 
for  he  ever  thought  all  things  of  this  kind  "  the  com- 
moner they  are  made  the  better."  The  garden  pe- 
dantry with  which  he  asserts  that  't  is  to  little  purpose 
to  plant  any  of  the  best  fruits,  as  peaches  or  grapes, 
hardly,  he  doubts,  beyond  Northamptonshire  at  the 
furthest  northwards ;  and  praises  the  '^  Bishop  of 
Munster  at  Cosevelt,"  for  attempting  nothing  beyond 
cherries  in  that  cold  climate ;  is  equally  pleasant  and 
in  character.  "  I  may  perhaps  '*  (he  thus  ends  his 
sweet  Garden  Essay  with  a  passage  worthy  of  Cowley) 
"  be  allowed  to  know  something  of  this  trade,  since  I 
have  so  long  allowed  myself  to  be  good  for  nothing 
else,  which  few  men  will  do,  or  enjoy  their  gardens, 
without  often  looking  abroad  to  see  how  other  matters 
play,  what  motions  in  the  state,  and  what  invitations 
they  may  hope  for  into  other  scenes.  For  my  own 
part,  as  the  country  life,  and  this  part  of  it  more  par- 
ticularly, were  the  inclination  of  my  youth  itself,  so 
they  are  the  pleasure  of  my  age ;  and  I  can  truly  say 
that,  among  many  great  employments  that  have  fallen 

7 


98         THE  GENTEEL   STYLE   IN   WRITING. 

to  my  share,  I  have  never  asked  or  sought  for  any  of 
them,  but  have  often  endeavoured  to  escape  from 
them,  into  the  ease  and  freedom  of  a  private  scene, 
where  a  man  may  go  his  own  way  and  his  own  pace, 
in  the  common  paths  and  circles  of  hfe.  The  mea- 
sure of  choosing  well  is  whether  a  man  likes  what  he 
has  chosen,  which  I  thank  God  has  befallen  me ;  and 
though  among  the  follies  of  my  life,  building  and 
planting  have  not  been  the  least,  and  have  cost  me 
more  than  I  have  the  confidence  to  own;  yet  they 
have  been  fully  recompensed  by  the  sweetness  and 
satisfaction  of  this  retreat,  where,  since  my  resolution 
taken  of  never  entering  again  into  any  public  employ- 
ments, I  have  passed  five  years  without  ever  once 
going  to  town,  though  I  am  almost  in  sight  of  it,  and 
have  a  house  there  always  ready  to  receive  me.  Nor 
has  this  been  any  sort  of  affectation,  as  some  have 
thought  it,  but  a  mere  want  of  desire  or  humour  to 
make  so  small  a  remove;  for  when  I  am  in  this 
corner,  I  can  truly  say  with  Horace,  Me  quoties 
reficit,  &=€. 

"  Me,  when  the  cold  Digentian  stream  revives, 
What  does  my  friend  believe  I  think  or  ask  ? 
Let  me  yet  less  possess,  so  I  may  live, 
Whate'er  of  life  remains,  unto  myself. 
May  I  have  books  enough  ;  and  one  year's  store, 
Not  to  depend  upon  each  doubtful  hour : 
This  is  enough  of  mighty  Jove  to  pray. 
Who,  as  he  pleases,  gives  and  takes  away." 


THE   GENTEEL   STYLE   IN    WRITING.       99 

The  writings  of  Temple  are,  in  general,  after  this 
easy  copy.  On  one  occasion,  indeed,  his  wit,  which 
was  mostly  subordinate  to  nature  and  tenderness,  has 
seduced  him  into  a  string  of  felicitous  antitheses ; 
which,  it  is  obvious  to  remark,  have  been  a  model  to 
Addison  and  succeeding  essayists.  "  Who  would  not 
be  covetous,  and  with  reason,"  he  says,  "if  health 
could  be  purchased  with  gold?  who  not  ambitious,  if 
it  were  at  the  command  of  power,  or  restored  by 
honour?  but,  alas  !  a  white  staff  will  not  help  gouty 
feet  to  walk  better  than  a  common  cane ;  nor  a  blue 
riband  bind  up  a  wound  so  well  as  a  fillet.  The 
glitter  of  gold,  or  of  diamonds,  will  but  hurt  sore  eyes 
instead  of  curing  them ;  and  an  aching  head  will  be 
no  more  eased  by  wearing  a  crown,  than  a  common 
night-cap."  In  a  far  better  style,  and  more  accord- 
ant with  his  own  humour  of  plainness,  are  the  con- 
cluding sentences  of  his  "  Discourse  upon  Poetry." 
Temple  took  a  part  in  the  controversy  about  the 
ancient  and  the  modern  learning;  and,  with  that 
partiality  so  natural  and  so  graceful  in  an  old  man, 
whose  state  engagements  ad  left  him  little  leisure  to 
look  into  modern  productions,  while  his  retirement 
gave  him  occasion  to  look  back  upon  the  classic 
studies  of  his  youth  —  decided  in  favour  of  the  latter. 
"Certain  it  is,"  he  says,  "that,  whether  the  fierce- 
ness of  the  Gothic  humours,  or  noise  of  their  per- 
petual wars,  frighted    it  away,  or   that    the  unequal 


lOO.      THE   GENTEEL  STYLE   IN   WRITING. 

mixture  of  the  modern  languages  would  not  bear  it  — 
the  great  heights  and  excellency  both  of  poetry  and 
music  fell  with  the  Roman  learning  and  empire,  and 
have  never  since  recovered  the  admiration  and  ap- 
plauses that  before  attended  them.  Yet,  such  as  they 
are  amongst  us,  they  must  be  confessed  to  be  the 
softest  and  sweetest,  the  most  general  and  most  inno- 
cent amusements  of  common  time  and  life.  They 
still  find  room  in  the  courts  of  princes,  and  the  cot- 
tages of  shepherds.  They  serve  to  revive  and  animate 
the  dead  calm  of  poor  and  idle  lives,  and  to  allay  or 
divert  the  violent  passions  and  perturbations  of  the 
greatest  and  the  busiest  men.  And  both  these  effects 
are  of  equal  use  to  human  life ;  for  the  mind  of  man 
is  like  the  sea,  which  is  neither  agreeable  to  the 
beholder  nor  the  voyager,  in  a  calm  or  in  a  storm, 
but  is  so  to  both  when  a  little  agitated  by  gentle 
gales;  and  so  the  mind,  when  moved  by  soft  and 
easy  passions  or  affections.  I  know  very  well  that 
many  who  pretend  to  be  wise  by  the  forms  of  being 
grave,  are  apt  to  despise  both  poetry  and  music,  as 
toys  and  trifles  too  light  for  the  use  or  entertainment 
of  serious  men.  But  whoever  find  themselves  wholly 
insensible  to  their  charms,  would,  I  think,  do  well  to 
keep  their  own  counsel,  for  fear  of  reproaching  their 
own  temper,  and  bringing  the  goodness  of  their 
natures,  if  not  of  their  understandings,  into  question. 
While  this  world  lasts,  I  doubt  not  but  the  pleasure 


THE   GENTEEL   STYLE   IN   WRITING.      10 1 

and  request  of  these  two  entertainments  will  do  so 
too;  and  happy  those  that  content  themselves  with 
these,  or  any  other  so  easy  and  so  innocent,  and  do 
not  trouble  the  world  or  other  men,  because  they 
cannot  be  quiet  themselves,  though  nobody  hurts 
them."  "When  all  is  done  (he  concludes),  human 
life  is  at  the  greatest  and  the  best  but  like  a  froward 
child,  that  must  be  played  with,  and  humoured  a 
little,  to  keep  it  quiet,  till  it  falls  asleep,  and  then  the 
care  is  over." 


BARBARA    S- 


On  the  noon  of  the  14th  of  November,  1743  or  4,  I 
forget  which  it  was,  just  as  the  clock  had  struck  one, 

Barbara  S ,  with  her  accustomed  punctuality 

ascended  the  long  rambling  staircase,  with  awkward 
interposed  landing-places,  which  led  to  the  ofifice,  or 
rather  a  sort  of  box  with  a  desk  in  it,  whereat  sat  the 
then  Treasurer  of  (what  few  of  our  readers  may  re- 
member) the  old  Bath  Theatre.  All  over  the  island 
it  was  the  custom,  and  remains  so  I  believe  to  this 
day,  for  the  players  to  receive  their  weekly  stipend 
on  the  Saturday.  It  was  not  much  that  Barbara  had 
to  claim. 

This  little  maid  had  just  entered  her  eleventh  year ; 
but  her  important  station  at  the  theatre,  as  it  seemed 
to  her,  with  the  benefits  which  she  felt  to  accrue 
from  her  pious  application  of  her  small  earnings,  had 
given  an  air  of  womanhood  to  her  steps  and  to  her 
behaviour.  You  would  have  taken  her  to  have  been 
at  least  five  years  older. 


BARBARA   S .  IO3 

Till  latterly  she  had  merely  been  employed  in 
choruses,  or  where  children  were  wanted  to  fill  up 
the  scene.  But  the  manager,  observing  a  diligence 
and  adroitness  in  her  above  her  age,  had  for  some 
few  months  past  intrusted  to  her  the  performance  of 
whole  parts.  You  may  guess  the  self  consequence 
of  the  promoted  Barbara.  She  had  already  drawn 
tears  in  young  Arthur ;  had  rallied  Richard  with  in- 
fantine petulance  in  the  Duke  of  York  ;  and  in  her 
turn  had  rebuked  that  petulance  when  she  was  Prince 
of  Wales.  She  would  have  done  the  elder  child  in 
Morton's  pathetic  after-piece  to  the  life;  but  as  yet 
the  "  Children  in  the  Wood  "  was  not. 

Long  after  this  little  girl  was  grown  an  aged  woman, 
I  have  seen  some  of  these  small  parts,  each  making 
two  or  three  pages  at  most,  copied  out  in  the  rudest 
hand  of  the  then  prompter,  who  doubtless  transcribed 
a  little  more  carefully  and  fairly  for  the  grown-up 
tragedy  ladies  of  the  establishment.  But  such  as 
they  were,  blotted  and  scrawled,  as  for  a  child's  use, 
she  kept  them  all;  and  in  the  zenith  of  her  after 
reputation  it  was  a  delightful  sight  to  behold  them 
bound  up  in  costliest  Morocco,  each  single  —  each 
small  part  making  a  book  —  with  fine  clasps,  gilt- 
splashed,  &c.  She  had  conscientiously  kept  them  as 
they  had  been  delivered  to  her ;  not  a  blot  had  been 
effaced  or  tampered  with.  They  were  precious  to 
her  for  their  affecting  remembrancings.     They  were 


104  BARBARA   S- 


her  principia,  her  rudiments ;  the  elementary  atoms ; 
the  little  steps  by  which  she  pressed  forward  to  per- 
fection. "  What,"  she  would  say,  "  could  Indian 
rubber,  or  a  pumice  stone,  have  done  for  these 
darlings?  " 

I  am  in  no  hurry  to  begin  my  story — indeed  I 
have  little  or  none  to  tell  —  so  I  will  just  mention  an 
observation  of  hers  connected  with  that  interesting 
time. 

Not  long  before  she  died  I  had  been  discoursing 
with  her  on  the  quantity  of  real  present  emotion 
which  a  great  tragic  performer  experiences  during 
acting.  I  ventured  to  think,  that  though  in  the  first 
instance  such  players  must  have  possessed  the  feel- 
ings which  they  so  powerfully  called  up  in  others,  yet 
by  frequent  repetition  those  feelings  must  become 
deadened  in  great  measure,  and  the  performer  trust 
to  the  memory  of  past  emotion,  rather  than  express 
a  present  one.  She  indignantly  repelled  the  notion, 
that  with  a  truly  great  tragedian  the  operation,  by 
which  such  effects  were  produced  upon  an  audience, 
could  ever  degrade  itself  into  what  was  purely  me- 
chanical. With  much  delicacy,  avoiding  to  instance 
in  her  j^^- experience,  she  told  me,  that  so  long  ago 
as  when  she  used  to  play  the  part  of  the  Little  Son  to 
Mrs.  Porter's  Isabella,  (I  think  it  was)  when  that 
impressive  actress  has  been  bending  over  her  in  some 
heart-rending  colloquy,   she   has  felt  real   hot  tears 


BARBARA   S .  10$ 

come  trickling  from  her,  which  (to  use  her  powerful 
expression)  have  perfectly  scalded  her  back. 

I  am  not  quite  so  sure  that  it  was  Mrs.  Porter ;  but 
it  was  some  great  actress  of  that  day.  The  name  is 
indifferent ;  but  the  fact  of  the  scalding  tears  I  most 
distinctly  remember. 

I  was  always  fond  of  the  society  of  players,  and 
am  not  sure  that  an  impediment  in  my  speech  (which 
certainly  kept  me  out  of  the  pulpit)  even  more  than 
certain  personal  disqualifications,  which  are  often  got 
over  in  that  profession,  did  not  prevent  me  at  one 
time  of  life  from  adopting  it.  I  have  had  the  honour 
(I  must  ever  call  it)  once  to  have  been  admitted  to 
the  tea-table  of  Miss  Kelly.  I  have  played  at  serious 
whist  with  Mr.  Liston.  I  have  chatted  with  ever 
good-humoured  Mrs.  Charles  Kemble.  I  have  con- 
versed as  friend  to  friend  with  her  accomplished 
husband.  I  have  been  indulged  with  a  classical 
conference  with  Macready ;  and  with  a  sight  of  the 
Player-picture  gallery,  at  Mr.  Matthews's,  when  the 
kind  owner,  to  remunerate  me  for  my  love  of  the  old 
actors  (whom  he  loves  so  much)  went  over  it  with 
me,  supplying  to  his  capital  collection,  what  alone  the 
artist  could  not  give  them  —  voice  ;  and  their  living 
motion.  Old  tones,  half- faded,  of  Dodd  and  Parsons, 
and  Baddeley,  have  lived  again  for  me  at  his  bidding. 
Only  Edwin  he  could  not  restore  to  me.  I  have 
supped  with ;  but  I  am  growing  a  coxcomb. 


I06  BARBARA   S- 


As  I  was  about  to  say  —  at  the  desk  of  the  then 
treasurer  of  the  old  Bath  theatre  —  not  Diamond's  — 
presented  herself  the  little  Barbara  S . 

The  parents  of  Barbara  had  been  in  reputable  cir- 
cumstances. The  father  had  practised,  I  believe,  as 
an  apothecary  in  the  town.  But  his  practice  from 
causes  which  I  feel  my  own  infirmity  too  sensibly 
that  way  to  arraign  —  or  perhaps  from  that  pure  in- 
felicity which  accompanies  some  people  in  their  walk 
through  life,  and  which  it  is  impossible  to  lay  at  the 
door  of  imprudence  —  was  now  reduced  to  nothing. 
They  were  in  fact  in  the  very  teeth  of  starvation, 
when  the  manager,  who  knew  and  respected  them  in 
better  days,  took  the  little  Barbara  into  his  company. 

At  the  period  I  commenced  with,  her  slender 
earnings  were  the  sole  support  of  the  family,  includ- 
ing two  younger  sisters.  I  must  throw  a  veil  over 
some  mortifying  circumstances.  Enough  to  say, 
that  her  Saturday's  pittance  was  the  only  chance  of 
a  Sunday's  (generally  their  only)  meal  of  meat. 

One  thing  I  will  only  mention,  that  in  some  child's 
part,  where  in  her  theatrical  character  she  was  to 
sup  off  a  roast  fowl  (O  joy  to  Barbara  !)  some  comic 
actor,  who  was  for  the  night  caterer  for  this  dainty 
—  in  the  misguided  humour  of  his  part,  threw  over 
the  dish  such  a  quantity  of  salt  (O  grief  and  pain 
of  heart  to  Barbara  !)  that  when  he  crammed  a  por- 
tion of  it  into  her  mouth,  she  was  obliged   sputter- 


BARBARA   S .  107 

ingly  to  reject  it ;  and  what  with  shame  of  her  ill- 
acted  part,  and  pain  of  real  appetite  at  missing  such 
a  dainty,  her  little  heart  sobbed  almost  to  breaking, 
till  a  flood  of  tears,  which  the  well-fed  spectators 
were  totally  unable  to  comprehend,  mercifully  re- 
Heved  her. 

This  was  the  little  starved,  meritorious  maid,  who 
stood  before  old  Ravenscroft,  the  treasurer,  for  her 
Saturday's  payment. 

Ravenscroft  was  a  man,  I  have  heard  many  old 
theatrical  people  besides  herself  say,  of  all  men  least 
calculated  for  a  treasurer.  He  had  no  head  for  ac- 
counts, paid  away  at  random,  kept  scarce  any  books, 
and  summing  up  at  the  week's  end,  if  he  found  him- 
self a  pound  or  so  deficient,  blest  himself  that  it 
was  no  worse. 

Now.  Barbara's  weekly  stipend  was  a  bare  half 
guinea.  —  By  mistake  he  popped  into  her  hand  a  — 
whole  one. 

Barbara  tripped  away. 

She  was  entirely  unconscious  at  first  of  the  mis- 
take :  God  knows,  Ravenscroft  would  never  have 
discovered  it. 

But  when  she  had  got  down  to  the  first  of  those 
uncouth  landing-places,  she  became  sensible  of  an 
unusual  weight  of  metal  pressing  her  little  hand. 

Now  mark  the  dilemma. 

She  was  by  nature  a  good  child.     From  her  pa- 


I08  BARBARA    S- 


rents  and  those  about  her  she  had  imbibed  no  con- 
trary influence.  But  then  they  had  taught  her 
nothing.  Poor  men's  smoky  cabins  are  not  always 
porticoes  of  moral  philosophy.  This  Httle  maid  had 
no  instinct  to  evil,  but  then  she  might  be  said  to 
have  no  fixed  principle.  She  had  heard  honesty 
commended,  but  never  dreamed  of  its  application 
to  herself.  She  thought  of  it  as  something  which 
concerned  grown-up  people  —  men  and  women.  She 
had  never  known  temptation,  or  thought  of  prepar- 
ing resistance  against  it. 

Her  first  impulse  was  to  go  back  to  the  old  treas- 
urer, and  explain  to  him  his  blunder.  He  was  al- 
ready so  confused  with  age,  besides  a  natural  want 
of  punctuality,  that  she  would  have  had  some  diffi- 
culty in  making  him  understand  it.  She  saw  that  in 
an  instant.  And  then  it  was  such  a  bit  of  money  ! 
and  then  the  image  of  a  larger  allowance  of  butcher's 
meat  on  their  table  next  day  came  across  her,  till 
her  little  eyes  glistened,  and  her  mouth  moistened. 
But  then  Mr.  Ravenscroft  had  always  been  so  good- 
natured,  had  stood  her  friend  behind  the  scenes, 
and  even  recommended  her  promotion  to  some  of 
her  little  parts.  But  again  the  old  man  was  reputed 
to  be  worth  a  world  of  money.  He  was  supposed 
to  have  fifty  pounds  a  year  clear  of  the  theatre. 
And  then  came  staring  upon  her  the  figures  of  her 
little  stockingless   and    shoeless   sisters.     And   when 


BARBARA   S .  109 

she  looked  at  her  own  neat  white  cotton  stockings, 
which  her  situation  at  the  theatre  had  made  it  in- 
dispensable for  her  mother  to  provide  for  her,  with 
hard  straining  and  pinching  from  the  family  stock, 
and  thought  how  glad  she  should  be  to  cover  their 
poor  feet  with  the  same  —  and  how  then  they  could 
accompany  her  to  rehearsals,  which  they  had  hitherto 
been  precluded  from  doing,  by  reason  of  their  un- 
fashionable attire,  —  in  these  thoughts  she  reached 
the  second  landing-place  —  the  second,  I  mean  from 
the  top  —  for  there  was  still  another  left  to  traverse. 

Now  virtue  support  Barbara  ! 

And  that  never-failing  friend  did  step  in  —  for  at 
that  moment  a  strength  not  her  own,  I  have  heard 
her  say,  was  revealed  to  her  —  a  reason  above  reason- 
ing—  and  without  her  own  agency,  as  it  seemed 
(for  she  never  felt  her  feet  to  move)  she  found  her- 
self transported  back  to  the  individual  desk  she  had 
just  quitted,  and  her  hand  in  the  old  hand  of  Ravens- 
croft,  who  in  silence  took  back  the  refunded  treasure, 
and  who  had  been  sitting  (good  man)  insensible  to 
the  lapse  of  minutes,  which  to  her  were  anxious 
ages ;  and  from  that  moment  a  deep  peace  fell 
upon  her  heart,  and  she  knew  the  quality  of 
honesty. 

A  year  or  two's  unrepining  application  to  her  pro- 
fession brightened  up  the  feet,  and  the  prospects,  of 
her  little  sisters,  set  the  whole  family  upon  their  legs 


no  BARBARA   S- 


again,  and  released  her  from  the  difficulty  of  dis- 
cussing moral  dogmas  upon  a  landing-place. 

I  have  heard  her  say,  that  it  was  a  surprise,  not 
much  short  of  mortification  to  her,  to  see  the  cool- 
ness with  which  the  old  man  pocketed  the  difference, 
which  had  caused  her  such  mortal  throes. 

This  anecdote  of  herself  I  had  in  the  year  1800, 
from  the  mouth  of  the  late  Mrs.  Crawford  *  then 
sixty-seven  years  of  age  (she  died  soon  after)  ;  and 
to  her  struggles  upon  this  childish  occasion  I  have 
sometimes  ventured  to  think  her  indebted  for  that 
power  of  rending  the  heart  in  the  representation  of 
conflicting  emotions,  for  which  in  after  years  she 
was  considered  as  Httle  inferior  (if  at  all  so  in  the 
part  of  Lady  Randolph)  even  to  Mrs.  Siddons. 

*  The  maiden  name  of  this  lady  was  Street,  which  she 
changed,  by  successive  marriages,  for  those  of  Dancer,  Barry, 
and  Crawford.  She  was  Mrs.  Crawford,  and  a  third  time  a 
widow,  when  I  knew  her. 


THE  TOMBS   IN   THE  ABBEY. 

IN   A   LETTER   TO    R S ,  ESQ. 


Though  in  some  points  of  doctrine,  and  perhaps  of 
discipline,  I  am  diffident  of  lending  a  perfect  assent 
to  that  church  which  you  have  so  worthily  historifiedy 
yet  may  the  ill  time  never  come  to  me,  when  with 
a  chilled  heart,  or  a  portion  of  irreverent  sentiment, 
I  shall  enter  her  beautiful  and  time-hallowed  Edi- 
fices. Judge  then  of  my  mortification  when,  after 
attending  the  choral  anthems  of  last  Wednesday  at 
Westminster,  and  being  desirous  of  renewing  my 
acquaintance,  after  lapsed  years,  with  the  tombs  and 
antiquities  there,  I  found  myself  excluded;  turned 
out  like  a  dog,  or  some  profane  person,  into  the 
common  street,  with  feelings  not  very  congenial  to 
the  place,  or  to  the  solemn  service  which  I  had  been 
listening  to.     It  was  a  jar  after  that  music. 

You  had  your  education  at  Westminster;  and 
doubtless  among  those  dim  aisles  and  cloisters,  you 
must  have  gathered  much  of  that  devotional  feeling 
in  those  young  years,  on  which   your   purest   mind 


112  THE   TOMBS    IN   THE   ABBEY. 

feeds  still  —  and  may  it  feed !  The  antiquarian 
spirit,  strong  in  you,  and  gracefully  blending  ever 
with  the  religious,  may  have  been  sown  in  you  among 
those  wrecks  of  splendid  mortality.  You  owe  it  to 
the  place  of  your  education;  you  owe  it  to  your 
learned  fondness  for  the  architecture  of  your  an- 
cestors ;  you  owe  it  to  the  venerableness  of  your 
ecclesiastical  establishment,  which  is  daily  lessened 
and  called  in  question  through  these  practices  —  to 
speak  aloud  your  sense  of  them ;  never  to  desist 
raising  your  voice  against  them,  till  they  be  totally 
done  away  with  and  abolished ;  till  the  doors  of 
Westminster  Abbey  be  no  longer  closed  against  the 
decent,  though  low-in-purse,  enthusiast,  or  blameless 
devotee,  who  must  commit  an  injury  against  his 
family  economy,  if  he  would  be  indulged  with  a  bare 
admission  within  its  walls.  You  owe  it  to  the  de- 
cencies, which  you  wish  to  see  maintained  in  its 
impressive  services,  that  our  Cathedral  be  no  longer 
an  object  of  inspection  to  the  poor  at  those  times 
only,  in  which  they  must  rob  from  their  attendance 
on  the  worship  every  minute  which  they  can  bestow 
upon  the  fabric.  In  vain  the  public  prints  have 
taken  up  this  subject,  in  vain  such  poor  nameless 
writers  as  myself  express  their  indignation.  A  word 
from  you,  Sir  —  a  hint  in  your  Journal  —  would  be 
sufficient  to  fling  open  the  doors  of  the  Beautiful 
Temple  again,  as  we  can  remember  them  when  we 


THE  TOMBS   IN   THE   ABBEY.  113 

were  boys.  At  that  time  of  life,  what  would  the 
imaginative  faculty  (such  as  it  is)  in  both  of  us, 
have  suffered,  if  the  entrance  to  so  much  reflection 
had  been  obstructed  by  the  demand  of  so  much 
silver !  —  If  we  had  scraped  it  up  to  gain  an  occa- 
sional admission  (as  we  certainly  should  have  done) 
would  the  sight  of  those  old  tombs  have  been  as 
impressive  to  us  (while  we  had  been  weighing 
anxiously  prudence  against  sentiment)  as  when  the 
gates  stood  open,  as  those  of  the  adjacent  Park; 
when  we  could  walk  in  at  any  time,  as  the  mood 
brought  us,  for  a  shorter  or  longer  time,  as  that 
lasted?  Is  the  being  shown  over  a  place  the  same 
as  silently  for  ourselves  detecting  the  genius  of  it? 
In  no  part  of  our  beloved  Abbey  now  can  a  person 
find  entrance  (out  of  service  time)  under  the  sum 
of  two  shillings.  The  rich  and  the  great  will  smile 
at  the  anticlimax,  presumed  to  lie  in  these  two  short 
words.  But  you  can  tell  them,  Sir,  how  much  quiet 
worth,  how  much  capacity  for  enlarged  feeling,  how 
much  taste  and  genius,  may  coexist,  especially  in 
youth,  with  a  purse  incompetent  to  this  demand.  — 
A  respected  friend  of  ours,  during  his  late  visit  to 
the  metropolis,  presented  himself  for  admission  to 
Saint  Paul's.  At  the  same  time  a  decently  clothed 
man,  with  as  decent  a  wife,  and  child,  were  bar- 
gaining for  the  same  indulgence.  The  price  was 
only  two-pence  each  person.     The  poor  but  decent 

8 


114  THE  TOMBS   IN   THE   ABBEY. 

man  hesitated,  desirous  to  go  in ;  but  there  were 
three  of  them,  and  he  turned  away  reluctantly. 
Perhaps  ho  wished  to  have  seen  the  tomb  of  Nelson. 
Perhaps  the  Interior  of  the  Cathedral  was  his  object. 
But  in  the  state  of  his  finances,  even  sixpence  might 
reasonably  seem  too  much.  Tell  the  Aristocracy  of 
the  country  (no  mart  can  do  it  more  impressively)  ; 
instruct  them  of  what  value  these  insignificant  pieces 
of  money,  these  minims  to  their  sight,  may  be  to 
their  humbler  brethren.  Shame  these  Sellers  out 
of  the  Temple.  Stifle  not  the  suggestions  of  your 
better  nature  with  the  pretext,  that  an  indiscriminate 
admission  would  expose  the  Tombs  to  violation. 
Remember  your  boy-days.  Did  you  ever  see,  or 
hear,  of  a  mob  in  the  Abbey,  while  it  was  free  to 
all?  Do  the  rabble  come  there,  or  trouble  their 
heads  about  such  speculations?  It  is  all  that  you 
can  do  to  drive  them  into  your  churches;  they  do 
not  voluntarily  offer  themselves.  They  have,  alas  ! 
n  J  passion  for  antiquities ;  for  tomb  of  king  or 
prelate,  sage  or  poet.  If  they  had,  they  would  be 
no  longer  the  rabble. 

For  forty  years  that  I  have  known  the  Fabric,  the 
only  well-attested  charge  of  violation  adduced,  has 
been  —  a  ridiculous  dismemberment  committed  upon 
the  effigy  of  that  amiable  spy.  Major  Andr^.  And 
is  it  for  this  —  the  wanton  mischief  of  some  school- 
boy, fired  perhaps  with  raw  notions  of  Transatlantic 


THE   TOMBS   IN   THE   ABBEY.  1 15 

Freedom  —  or  the  remote  possibility  of  such  a  mis- 
chief occurring  again,  so  easily  to  be  prevented  by 
stationing  a  constable  within  the  walls,  if  the  vergers 
are  incompetent  to  the  duty  —  is  it  upon  such 
wretched  pretences,  that  the  people  of  England  are 
made  to  pay  a  new  Peter's  Pence,  so  long  abro- 
gated ;  or  must  content  themselves  with  contem- 
plating the  ragged  Exterior  of  their  Cathedral  ?  The 
mischief  was  done  about  the  time  that  you  were  a 
scholar  there.  Do  you  know  any  thing  about  the 
unfortunate  relic?  — 


AMICUS   REDIVIVUS. 


Where  were  ye,  Nymphs,  when  the  remorseless  deep 
Clos'd  o'er  the  head  of  your  loved  Lycidas  ? 


I  DO  not  know  when  I  have  experienced  a  stranger 
sensation,  than  on  seeing  my  old  friend  G.  D.,  who 
had  been  paying  me  a  morning  visit  a  few  Sundays 
back,  at  my  cottage  at  Islington,  upon  taking  leave, 
instead  of  turning  down  the  right  hand  path  by  which 
he  had  entered  — with  staff  in  hand,  and  at  noon 
day,  deliberately  march  right  forwards  into  the  midst 
of  the  stream  that  runs  by  us,  and  totally  disappear. 

A  spectacle  like  this  at  dusk  would  have  been 
appalling  enough ;  but,  in  the  broad  open  daylight, 
to  witness  such  an  unreserved  motion  towards  self- 
destruction  in  a  valued  friend,  took  from  me  all 
power  of  speculation. 

How  I  found  my  feet,  I  know  not.  Consciousness 
was  quite  gone.  Some  spirit,  not  my  own,  whirled 
me  to  the  spot.  I  remember  nothing  but  the  silvery 
apparition  of  a  good    white   head    emerging;    nigh 


AMICUS   REDIVIVUS.  II7 

which  a  staff  (the  hand  unseen  that  wielded  it) 
pointed  upwards,  as  feeling  for  the  skies.  In  a 
moment  (if  time  was  in  that  time)  he  was  on  my 
shoulders,  and  I  —  freighted  with  a  load  more  pre- 
cious than  his  who  bore  Anchises. 

And  here  I  cannot  but  do  justice  to  the  officious 
zeal  of  sundry  passers  by,  who,  albeit  arriving  a  little 
too  late  to  participate  in  the  honours  of  the  rescue, 
in  philanthropic  shoals  came  thronging  to  commu- 
nicate their  advice  as  to  the  recovery;  prescribing 
variously  the  application,  or  non-application,  of  salt, 
&c.,  to  the  person  of  the  patient.  Life  meantime 
was  ebbing  fast  away,  amidst  the  stifle  of  conflicting 
judgments,  when  one,  more  sagacious  than  the  rest, 
by  a  bright  thought,  proposed  sending  for  the  Doctor. 
Trite  as  the  counsel  was,  and  impossible,  as  one 
should  think,  to  be  missed  on,  —  shall  I  confess  ?  — 
in  this  emergency,  it  was  to  me  as  if  an  Angel  had 
spoken.  Great  previous  exertions  —  and  mine  had 
not  been  inconsiderable  —  are  commonly  followed 
by  a  debility  of  purpose.  This  was  a  moment  of 
irresolution. 

MoNOCULUS  —  for  so,  in  default  of  catching  his 
true  name,  I  choose  to  designate  the  medical  gentle- 
man who  now  appeared  —  is  a  grave,  middle-aged 
person,  who,  without  having  studied  at  the  college,  or 
truckled  to  the  pedantry  of  a  diploma,  hath  employed 
a  great  portion  of  his  valuable  time  in  experimental 


Il8  AMICUS   REDIVIVUS. 

processes  upon  the  bodies  of  unfortunate  fellow- 
creatures,  in  whom  the  vital  spark,  to  mere  vulgar 
thinking,  would  seem  extinct,  and  lost  for  ever.  He 
oraitteth  no  occasion  of  obtruding  his  services,  from 
a  case  of  common  surfeit-suffocation  to  the  ignobler 
obstructions,  sometimes  induced  by  a  too  wilful  ap- 
plication of  the  plant  Cannabis  outwardly.  But 
though  he  declineth  not  altogether  these  drier  ex- 
tinctions, his  occupation  tendeth  for  the  most  part 
to  water-practice;  for  the  convenience  of  which,  he 
hath  judiciously  fixed  his  quarters  near  the  grand 
repository  of  the  stream  mentioned,  where,  day  and 
night,  from  his  little  watch-tower,  at  the  Middleton's- 
Head,  he  listeneth  to  detect  the  wrecks  of  drowned 
mortality  —  partly,  as  he  saith,  to  be  upon  the  spot 
—  and  partly,  because  the  liquids  which  he  useth  to 
prescribe  to  himself  and  his  patients,  on  these  dis- 
tressing occasions,  are  ordinarily  more  conveniently 
to  be  found  at  these  common  hostelries,  than  in  the 
shops  and  phials  of  the  apothecaries.  His  ear  hath 
arrived  to  such  finesse  by  practice,  that  it  is  reported, 
he  can  distinguish  a  plunge  at  a  half  furlong  distance  ; 
and  can  tell,  if  it  be  casual  or  deliberate.  He  wear- 
eth  a  medal,  suspended  over  a  suit,  originally  of  a 
sad  brown,  but  which,  by  time,  and  frequency  of 
nightly  divings,  has  been  dinged  into  a  true  pro- 
fessional sable.  He  passeth  by  the  name  of  Doctor, 
and   is   remarkable    for   wanting   his   left   eye.     His 


AMICUS  REDIVIVUS.  1 19 

remedy  —  after  a  sufficient  application  of  warm 
blankets,  friction,  &c.,  is  a  simple  tumbler,  or  more, 
of  the  purest  Cognac,  with  water,  made  as  hot  as 
the  convalescent  can  bear  it.  Where  he  findeth,  as 
in  the  case  of  my  friend,  a  squeamish  subject,  he 
condescendeth  to  be  the  taster;  and  showeth,  by 
his  own  example,  the  innocuous  nature  of  the  pre- 
scription. Nothing  can  be  more  kind  or  encourag- 
ing than  this  procedure.  It  addeth  confidence  to 
the  patient,  to  see  his  medical  adviser  go  hand  in 
hand  with  himself  in  the  remedy.  When  the  doctor 
swalloweth  his  own  draught,  what  peevish  invalid 
can  refuse  to  pledge  him  in  the  potion?  In  fine, 
MoNOCULUS  is  a  humane,  sensible  man,  who,  for  a 
slender  pittance,  scarce  enough  to  sustain  life,  is 
content  to  wear  it  out  in  the  endeavour  to  save  the 
lives  of  others  —  his  pretensions  so  moderate,  that 
with  difficulty  I  could  press  a  crown  upon  him,  for 
the  price  of  restoring  the  existence  of  such  an  in- 
valuable creature  to  society  as  G.  D. 

It  was  pleasant  to  observe  the  effect  of  the  subsid- 
ing alarm  upon  the  nerves  of  the  dear  absentee.  It 
seemed  to  have  given  a  shake  to  memory,  calling  up 
notice  after  notice,  of  all  the  providential  deliver- 
ances he  had  experienced  in  the  course  of  his  long 
and  innocent  life.  Sitting  up  in  my  couch  —  my 
couch  which,  naked  and  void  of  furniture  hitherto, 
for  the   salutary  repose  which  it  administered,  shall 


I20  AMICUS   REDIVIVUS. 

be  honoured  with  costly  valance,  at  some  price,  and 
henceforth  be  a  state-bed  at  Colebrook,  —  he  dis- 
coursed of  marvellous  escapes  —  by  carelessness  of 
nurses  —  by  pails  of  gelid,  and  kettles  of  the  boiling 
element,  in  infancy  —  by  orchard  pranks,  and  snap- 
ping twigs,  in  schoolboy  frolics  —  by  descent  of  tiles 
at  Trumpington,  and  of  heavier  tomes  at  Pembroke 

—  by  studious  watchings,  inducing  frightful  vigilance 

—  by  want,  and  the  fear  of  want,  and  all  the  sore 
throbbings  of  the  learned  head.  —  Anon,  he  would 
burst  out  into  little  fragments  of  chaunting  —  of 
songs  long  ago  —  ends  of  deliverance-hymns,  not 
remembered  before  since  childhood,  but  coming  up 
now,  when  his  heart  was  made  tender  as  a  child's  — 
for  the  tremor  cordis^  in  the  retrospect  of  a  recent 
deliverance,  as  in  a  case  of  impending  danger,  act- 
ing upon  an  innocent  heart,  will  produce  a  self- 
tenderness,  which  we  should  do  ill  to  christen 
cowardice ;  and  Shakspeare,  in  the  latter  crisis,  has 
made  his  good  Sir  Hugh  to  remember  the  sitting 
by  Babylon,  and  to  mutter  of  shallow  rivers. 

Waters  of  Sir  Hugh  Middleton  —  what  a  spark 
you  were  like  to  have  extinguished  for  ever !  Your 
salubrious  streams  to  this  City,  for  now  near  two 
centuries,  would  hardly  have  atoned  for  what  you 
were  in  a  moment  washing  away.  Mockery  of  a 
river  —  liquid  artifice  —  wretched  conduit !  hence- 
forth    rank    with   canals,    and    sluggish    aqueducts. 


AMICUS   REDIVIVUS.  121 

Was  it  for  this,  that,  smit  in  boyhood  with  the  ex- 
plorations of  that  Abyssinian  traveller,  I  paced  the 
vales  of  Amwell  to  explore  your  tributary  springs,  to 
trace  your  salutary  waters  sparkling  through  green 
Hertfordshire,  and  cultured  Enfield  parks? — Ye 
have  no  swans  —  no  Naiads  —  no  river  God  —  or 
did  the  benevolent  hoary  aspect  of  my  friend  tempt 
ye  to  suck  him  in,  that  ye  also  might  have  the 
tutelary  genius  of  your  waters? 

Had  he  been  drowned  in  Cam  there  would  have 
been  some  consonancy  in  it;  but  what  willows  had 
ye  to  wave  and  rustle  over  his  moist  sepulture?  — 
or,  having  no  na^jie^  besides  that  unmeaning  assump- 
tion of  eternal  novity,  did  ye  think  to  get  one  by 
the  noble  prize,  and  henceforth  to  be  termed  the 
Stream  Dverian? 

And  could  such  spacious  virtue  find  a  grave 
Beneath  the  imposthumed  bubble  of  a  wave  ? 

I  protest,  George,  you  shall  not  venture  out  again 
—  no,  not  by  daylight  —  without  a  sufficient  pair 
of  spectacles  —  in  your  musing  moods  especially. 
Your  absence  of  mind  we  have  borne,  till  your  pres- 
ence of  body  came  to  be  called  in  question  by  it. 
You  shall  not  go  wandering  into  Euripus  with  Aris- 
totle, if  we  can  help  it.  Fie,  man,  to  turn  dipper 
at  your  years,  after  your  many  tracts  in  favour  of 
sprinkling  only  ! 

I   have   nothing   but   water  in  my  head  o'  nights 


122  AMICUS   REDIVIVUS. 

since  this  frightful  accident.  Sometimes  I  am  with 
Clarence  in  his  dream.  At  others,  I  behold  Chris- 
tian beginning  to  sink,  and  crying  out  to  his  good 
brother  Hopeful  (that  is  to  me),  "I  sink  in  deep 
waters ;  the  billows  go  over  my  head,  all  the  waves 
go  over  me.  Selah."  Then  I  have  before  me 
Palinurus,  just  letting  go  the  steerage.  I  cry  out 
too  late  to  save.  Next  follow  —  a  mournful  proces- 
sion —  suicidal  faces,  saved  against  their  wills  from 
drowning;  dolefully  trailing  a  length  of  reluctant 
gratefulness,  with  ropy  weeds  pendant  from  locks 
of  watchet  hue  —  constrained  Lazari  —  Pluto's  half- 
subjects  —  stolen  fees  from  the  grave  —  bilking  Cha- 
ron of  his  fare.  At  their  head  Arion  —  or  is  it 
G.  D.  ?  —  in  his  singing  garments  marcheth  singly, 
with  harp  in  hand,  and  votive  garland,  which 
Machaon  (or  Dr.  Hawes)  snatcheth  straight,  intend- 
ing to  suspend  it  to  the  stern  God  of  Sea.  Then 
follow  dismal  streams  of  Lethe,  in  which  the  half- 
drenched  on  earth  are  constrained  to  drown  down- 
right, by  wharfs  where  Ophelia  twice  acts  her  muddy 
death. 

And,  doubtless,  there  is  some  notice  in  that  in- 
visible world,  when  one  of  us  approacheth  (as  my 
friend  did  so  lately)  to  their  inexorable  precincts. 
When  a  soul  knocks  once,  twice,  at  death's  door, 
the  sensation  aroused  within  the  palace  must  be 
considerable ;    and     the   grim    Feature,    by   modern 


AMICUS    REDIVIVUS.  123 

science  so  often  dispossessed  of  his  prey,  must  have 
learned  by  this  time  to  pity  Tantalus. 

A  pulse  assuredly  was  felt  along  the  line  of  the 
Elysian  shades,  when  the  near  arrival  of  G.  D.  was 
announced  by  no  equivocal  indications.  From  their 
seats  of  Asphodel  arose  the  gentler  and  the  graver 
ghosts  —  poet,  or  historian  —  of  Grecian  or  of  Roman 
lore  —  to  crown  with  unfading  chaplets  the  half- 
finished  love-labours  of  their  unwearied  scholiast. 
Him  Markland  expected  —  him  Tyrwhitt  hoped  to 
encounter  —  him  the  sweet  lyrist  of  Peter  House, 
whom  he  had  barely  seen  upon  earth*,  with  newest 

airs   prepared   to    greet ;    and,   patron    of  the 

gentle  Christ's  boy,  —  who  should  have  been  his 
patron  through  life  —  the  mild  Askew,  with  longing 
aspirations,  leaned  foremost  from  his  venerable 
-^sculapian  chair,  to  welcome  into  that  happy  com- 
pany the  matured  virtues  of  the  man,  whose  tender 
scions  in  the  boy  he  himself  upon  earth  had  so 
prophetically  fed  and  watered. 

*  Graium  tantum  vidit. 


SOME   SONNETS   OF   SIR   PHILIP 
SYDNEY. 


Sydney's  Sonnets  —  I  speak  of  the  best  of  them  — 
are  among  the  very  best  of  their  sort.  They  fall 
below  the  plain  moral  dignity,  the  sanctity,  and  high 
yet  modest  spirit  of  self- approval,  of  Milton,  in  his 
compositions  of  a  similar  structure.  They  are  in 
truth  what  Milton,  censuring  the  Arcadia,  says  of 
that  work  (to  which  they  are  a  sort  of  after-tune  or 
application),  *'vain  and  amatorious "  enough,  yet 
the  things  in  their  kind  (as  he  confesses  to  be  true 
of  the  romance)  may  be  "full  of  worth  and  wit." 
They  savour  of  the  courtier,  it  must  be  allowed,  and 
not  of  the  Commonwealthsman.  But  Milton  was  a 
Courtier  when  he  wrote  the  Masque  at  Ludlow 
Castle,  and  still  more  a  Courtier  when  he  composed 
the  Arcades.  When  the  national  struggle  was  to 
begin,  he  becomingly  cast  these  vanities  behind  him ; 
and  if  the  order  of  time  had  thrown  Sir  Philip  upon 
the  crisis  which  preceded  the  Revolution,  there  is 
no  reason  why  he  should  not  have  acted  the  same 


SIR   PHILIP   SYDNEY'S   SONNETS.  125 

part  in  that  emergency,  which  has  glorified  the  name 
of  a  later  Sydney.  He  did  not  want  for  plainness 
or  boldness  of  spirit.  His  letter  on  the  French 
match  may  testify,  he  could  speak  his  mind  freely 
to  Princes.  The  times  did  not  call  him  to  the 
scaffold. 

The  Sonnets  which  we  oftenest  call  to  mind  of 
Milton  were  the  compositions  of  his  maturest  years. 
Those  of  Sydney,  which  I  am  about  to  produce, 
were  written  in  the  very  hey-day  of  his  blood.  They 
are  stuck  full  of  amorous  fancies  —  far-fetched  con- 
ceits, befitting  his  occupation ;  for  True  Love  thinks 
no  labour  to  send  out  Thoughts  upon  the  vast,  and 
more  than  Indian  voyages,  to  bring  home  rich  pearls, 
outlandish  wealth,  gums,  jewels,  spicery,  to  sacrifice 
in  self-depreciating  similitudes,  as  shadows  of  true 
amiabilities  in  the  Beloved.  We  must  be  Lovers  — 
or  at  least  the  cooling  touch  of  time,  the  circum  prce- 
cordiafrigus,  must  not  have  so  damped  our  facul- 
ties, as  to  take  away  our  recollection  that  we  were 
once  so  —  before  we  can  duly  appreciate  the  glorious 
vanities,  and  graceful  hyperboles,  of  the  passion. 
The  images  which  lie  before  our  feet  (though  by 
some  accounted  the  only  natural)  are  least  natural 
for  the  high  Sydnean  love  to  express  its  fancies  by. 
They  may  serve  for  the  loves  of  Tibullus,  or  the 
dear  Author  of  the  Schoolmistress ;  for  passions  that 
creep  and  whine  in  Elegies  and  Pastoral  Ballads.     I 


126  SIR  PHILIP   SYDNEY'S   SONNETS. 

am  sure  Milton  never  loved  at  this  rate.  I  am  afraid 
some  of  his  addresses  {ad  Leonoram  I  mean)  have 
rather  erred  on  the  farther  side ;  and  that  the  poet 
came  not  much  short  of  a  religious  indecorum,  when 
he  could  thus  apostrophise  a  singing  girl :  — 

Angelus  unicuique  suus  (sic  credite  gentes) 

Obtigit  aetheriiis  ales  ab  ordinibus. 
Quid  mirum,  Leonora,  tibi  si  gloria  major, 

Nam  tua  praesentem  vox  sonat  ipsa  Deum? 
Aut  Deus,  aut  vacui  certe  mens  tertia  coeli 

Per  tua  secreto  guttura  serpit  agens  ; 
Serpit  agens,  facilisque  docet  mortalia  corda 

Sensim  immortali  assuescere  posse  sono. 
Quod  si  cuncta  quidem  Deus  est,  per  cuncta- 
que  fusus. 

In  TE  UNA  LOQUITUR,  CETERA  MUTUS  HABET. 

This  is  loving  in  a  strange  fashion ;  and  it  requires 
some  candour  of  construction  (besides  the  slight 
darkening  of  a  dead  language)  to  cast  a  veil  over 
the  ugly  appearance  of  something  very  like  blas- 
phemy in  the  last  two  verses.  I  think  the  Lover 
would  have  been  staggered,  if  he  had  gone  about 
to  express  the  same  thought  in  English.  I  am  sure, 
Sydney  has  no  flights  like  this.  His  extravaganzas 
do  not  strike  at  the  sky,  though  he  takes  leave  to 
adopt  the  pale  Dian  into  a  fellowship  with  his 
mortal  passions. 


SIR  PHILIP  SYDNEY'S   SONNETS.  127 


With  how  sad  steps,  O  Moon,  thou  climb'st  the  skies; 

How  silently ;  and  with  how  wan  a  face  ! 

What !  may  it  be,  that  even  in  heavenly  place 

That  busy  Archer  his  sharp  arrows  tries  ? 

Sure,  if  that  long-with-love-acquainted  eyes 

Can  judge  of  love,  thou  fcel'st  a  lover's  case; 

I  read  it  in  thy  looks  ;  thy  languisht  grace 

To  me,  that  feel  the  hke,  thy  state  descries. 

Then,  even  of  fellowship,  O  Moon,  tell  me, 

Is  constant  love  deem'd  there  but  want  of  wit? 

Are  beauties  there  as  proud  as  here  they  be  ? 

Do  they  above  love  to  be  loved,  and  yet 

Those  lovers  scorn,  whom  that  love  doth  possess? 

Do  they  call  virtue  there  —  ungratefulness  ? 

The  last  line  of  this  poem  is  a  little  obscured  by 
transposition.  He  means,  Do  they  call  ungrateful- 
ness there  a  virtue? 

II. 

Come,  Sleep,  O  Sleep,  the  certain  knot  of  peace, 
The  baiting  place  of  wit,  the  balm  of  woe, 
The  poor  man's  wealth,  the  prisoner's  release, 
The  indifferent  judge  between  the  high  and  low ; 
With  shield  of  proof  shield  me  from  out  the  prease  * 
Of  those  fierce  darts  despair  at  me  doth  throw; 

0  make  in  me  those  civil  wars  to  cease  : 

1  will  good  tribute  pay,  if  thou  do  so. 

Take  thou  of  me  sweet  pillows,  sweetest  bed; 
A  chamber  deaf  to  noise,  and  blind  to  light ; 

*  Press. 


128  SIR   PHILIP   SYDNEY'S    SONNETS. 

A  rosy  garland,  and  a  weary  head. 
And  if  these  things,  as  being  thine  by  right, 
Move  not  thy  heavy  grace,  thou  shalt  in  me, 
Livelier  than  elsewhere,  Stella's  image  see. 


III. 

The  curious  wits,  seeing  dull  pensiveness 
Bewray  itself  in  my  long-settled  eyes. 
Whence  those  same  fumes  of  melancholy  rise, 
With  idle  pains,  and  missing  aim,  do  guess. 
Some,  that  know  how  my  spring  I  did  address, 
Deem  that  ray  Muse  some  fruit  of  knowledge  plies; 
Others,  because  the  Prince  my  service  tries, 
Think,  that  I  think  state  errors  to  redress ; 
But  harder  judges  judge,  ambition's  rage, 
Scourge  of  itself,  still  climbing  slippery  place. 
Holds  my  young  brain  captiv'd  in  golden  cage. 
O  fools,  or  over-wise !  alas,  the  race 
Of  all  my  thoughts  hath  neither  stop  nor  start, 
But  only  Stella's  eyes,  and  Stella's  heart. 


IV. 

Because  I  oft  in  dark  abstracted  guise 

Seem  most  alone  in  greatest  company, 

With  dearth  of  words,  or  answers  quite  awry, 

To  them  that  would  make  speech  of  speech  arise ; 

They  deem,  and  of  their  doom  the  rumour  flies, 

That  poison  foul  of  bubbling  Pride  doth  lie 

So  in  my  swelling  breast,  that  only  I 

Fawn  on  myself,  and  others  do  despise ; 

Yet  Pride,  I  think,  doth  not  my  Soul  possess. 

Which  looks  too  oft  in  his  unflattering  glass : 


SIR  PHILIP  SYDNEY'S   SONNETS.  1 29 

But  one  worse  fault  —  Af/ibition  —  I  confess, 
That  makes  me  oft  my  best  friends  overpass, 
Unseen,  unheard  —  while  Thought  to  highest  place 
Bends  all  his  powers,  even  unto  Stella's  grace. 


V. 

Having  this  day,  my  horse,  my  hand,  my  lance, 
Guided  so  well  that  I  obtained  the  prize. 
Both  by  the  judgment  of  the  English  eyes, 
And  of  some  sent  from  that  sweet  enemy ^  —  France  ; 
Horsemen  my  skill  in  horsemanship  advance ; 
Townsfolks  my  strength  ;  a  daintier  judge  applies 
His  praise  to  sleight,  which  from  good  use  doth  rise ; 
Some  lucky  wits  impute  it  but  to  chance ; 
Others,  because  of  both  sides  I  do  take 
My  blood  from  them,  who  did  excel  in  this, 
Think  Nature  me  a  man  of  arms  did  make. 
How  far  they  shot  awry  !  the  true  cause  is, 
Stella  look'd  on,  and  from  her  heavenly  face 
Sent  forth  the  beams  which  made  so  fair  my  race. 


VL 

In  martial  sports  I  had  my  cunning  tried. 
And  yet  to  break  more  staves  did  me  address, 
While  with  the  people's  shouts  (I  must  confess) 
Youth,  luck,  and  praise,  even  fill'd  my  veins  with  pride 
When  Cupid,  having  me  (his  slave)  descried 
In  Mars's  livery,  prancing  in  the  press, 
"  What  now,  Sir  Fool !  "  said  he  ;  "I  would  no  less  : 
Look  here,  I  say."     I  look'd,  and  Stella  spied. 
Who  hard  by  made  a  window  send  forth  light. 
My  heart  then  quak'd,  then  dazzled  were  mine  eyes  ; 
9 


I30  SIR   PHILIP   SYDNEY'S   SONNETS. 

One  hand  forgot  to  rule,  th'  other  to  fight ; 
Nor  trumpet's  sound  I  heard,  nor  friendly  cries. 
My  foe  came  on,  and  beat  the  air  for  me  — 
Till  that  her  blush  made  me  my  shame  to  see. 

VII. 

No  more,  my  dear,  no  more  these  counsels  try ; 

0  give  my  passions  leave  to  run  their  race  ; 
Let  Fortune  lay  on  me  her  worst  disgrace  ; 

Let  folk  o'er-charged  with  brain  against  me  cry ; 
Let  clouds  bedim  my  face,  break  in  mine  eye  ; 
Let  me  no  steps,  but  of  lost  labour,  trace  ; 
Let  all  the  earth  with  scorn  recount  my  case  — 
But  do  not  will  me  from  my  love  to  fly. 

1  do  not  envy  Aristotle's  wit. 

Nor  do  aspire  to  Caesar's  bleeding  fame ; 
Nor  aught  do  care,  though  some  above  me  sit ; 
Nor  hope,  nor  wish,  another  course  to  frame. 
But  that  which  once  may  win  thy  cruel  heart : 
Thou  art  my  wit,  and  thou  my  virtue  art. 

VIII. 

Love  still  a  boy,  and  oft  a  wanton,  is, 

School'd  only  by  his  mother's  tender  eye  ; 

What  wonder  then,  if  he  his  lesson  miss. 

When  for  so  soft  a  rod  dear  play  he  try  ? 

And  yet  my  Star,  because  a  sugar'd  kiss 

In  sport  I  suck'd,  while  she  asleep  did  lie, 

Doth  lour,  nay  chide,  nay  threat,  for  only  this. 

Sweet,  it  was  saucy  Love,  not  humble  I. 

But  no  'scuse  serves ;  she  makes  her  wrath  appear 

In  beauty's  throne  —  see  now,  who  dares  come  near 

Those  scarlet  judges,  threat'ning  bloody  pain? 

O  heav'nly  Fool,  thy  most  kiss-worthy  face 


SIR   PHILIP  SYDNEY'S   SONNETS.         131 

Anger  invests  with  such  a  lovely  grace, 
That  anger's  self  1  needs  must  kiss  again. 

IX. 

I  never  drank  of  Aganippe  well, 

Nor  ever  did  in  shade  of  Tempe  sit, 

And  Muses  scorn  with  vulgar  brains  to  dwell; 

Poor  lay-man  I,  for  sacred  rites  unfit. 

Some  do  I  hear  of  Poets'  fury  tell, 

But  (God  wot)  wot  not  what  they  mean  by  it ; 

And  this  I  swear  by  blackest  brook  of  hell, 

I  am  no  pick-purse  of  another's  wit. 

How  falls  it  then,  that  with  so  smooth  an  ease 

My  thoughts  I  speak,  and  what  I  speak  doth  flow 

In  verse,  and  that  my  verse  best  wits  doth  please  .»* 

Guess  me  the  cause  —  what  is  it  thus  ?  —  fye,  no. 

Or  so  ?  —  much  less.     How  then  ?  sure  thus  it  is, 

My  lips  are  sweet,  inspired  with  Stella's  kiss. 

X. 

Of  all  the  kings  that  ever  here  did  reign, 
Edward,  named  Fourth,  as  first  in  praise  I  name, 
Not  for  his  fair  outside,  nor  well-lined  brain  — 
Although  less  gifts  imp  feathers  oft  on  Fame. 
Nor  that  he  could,  young-wise,  wise-valiant,  frame 
His  sire's  revenge,  join'd  with  a  kingdom's  gain ; 
And,  gain'd  by  Mars  could  yet  mad  Mars  so  tame. 
That  Balance  weigh'd  what  Sword  did  late  obtain. 
Nor  that  he  made  the  Floure-de-luce  so  'fraid. 
Though  strongly  hedged  of  bloody  Lions'  paws, 
That  witty  Lewis  to  him  a  tribute  paid. 
Nor  this,  nor  that,  nor  any  such  small  cause  — 
But  only,  for  this  worthy  knight  durst  prove 
To  lose  his  crown  rather  than  fail  his  love. 


132         SIR  trtlLlP   SVt)NEV'S  SONNETS 


XI. 

0  happy  Thames,  that  didst  my  Stella  bear, 

1  saw  thyself,  with  many  a  smiHng  line 
Upon  thy  cheerful  face,  Joy's  livery  wear, 
While  those  fair  planets  on  thy  streams  did  shine; 
The  boat  for  joy  could  not  to  dance  forbear, 
While  wanton  winds,  with  beauty  so  divine 
Ravish'd,  stay'd  not,  till  in  her  golden  hair 
They  did  themselves  (O  sweetest  prison)  twine. 
And  fain  those  ^ol's  youth  there  would  their  stay 
Have  made  ;  but,  forced  by  nature  still  to  fly. 
First  did  with  puiifing  kiss  those  locks  display. 
She,  so  dishevell'd,  blush'd  ;  from  window  I 
With  sight  thereof  cried  out,  O  fair  disgrace. 

Let  honour's  self  to  thee  grant  highest  place ! 


XII. 

Highway,  since  you  my  chief  Parnassus  be ; 
And  that  my  Muse,  to  some  ears  not  unsweet, 
Tempers  her  words  to  trampHng  horses'  feet, 
More  soft  than  to  a  chamber  melody,  — 
Now  blessed  You  bear  onward  blessed  Me 
To  Her,  where  I  my  heart  safe  left  shall  meet, 
My  Muse  and  I  must  you  of  duty  greet 
With  thanks  and  wishes,  wishing  thankfully. 
Be  you  still  fair,  honour'd  by  public  heed, 
By  no  encroachment  wrong'd,  nor  time  forgot; 
Nor  blam'd  for  blood,  nor  shamed  for  sinful  deed. 
And  that  you  know,  I  envy  you  no  lot 
Of  highest  wish,  I  wish  you  so  much  bliss. 
Hundreds  of  years  you  Stella's  feet  may  kiss. 


SIR   PHILIP   SYDNEY'S   SONNETS.  133 

Of  the  foregoing,  the  first,  the  second,  and  the 
last  sonnet,  are  my  favourites.  But  the  general 
beauty  of  them  all  is,  that  they  are  so  perfectly  char- 
acteristical.  The  spirit  of  "  learning  and  of  chivalry," 
—  of  which  union,  Spenser  has  entitled  Sydney  to 
have  been  the  ''  president,"  —  shines  through  them. 
I  confess  I  can  see  nothing  of  the  "jejune"  or 
*•  frigid  "  in  them;  much  less  of  the  "stiff"  and 
"cumbrous" — which  I  have  sometimes  heard  ob- 
jected to  the  Arcadia.  The  verse  runs  off  swiftly  and 
gallantly.  It  might  have  been  tuned  to  the  trumpet ; 
or  tempered  (as  himself  expresses  it)  to  "  trampling 
horses'  feet."     They  abound  in  felicitous  phrases  — 

O  heav'nly  Fool,  thy  most  kiss-worthy  face  — 

Sfh  Sonnet. 

Sweet  pillows,  sweetest  bed ; 

A  chamber  deaf  to  noise,  and  blind  to  light ; 

A  rosy  garland,  and  a  weary  head. 

ind  Sonnet. 

That  sweet  enemy,  —  France  — 

^th  Sonnet. 

But  they  are  not  rich  in  words  only,  in  vague  and 
unlocalised  feelings  —  the  failing  too  much  of  some 
poetry  of  the  present  day  —  they  are  full,  material, 
and  circumstantiated.  Time  and  place  appropriates 
every  one  of  them.  It  is  not  a  fever  of  passion  wast- 
ing itself  upon  a  thin  diet  of  dainty  words,  but  a  tran- 


134  SIR   PHILIP   SYDNEY'S    SONNETS. 

scendent  passion  pervading  and  illuminating  action, 
pursuits,  studies,  feats  of  arms,  the  opinions  of  con- 
temporaries and  his  judgment  of  them.  An  historical 
thread  runs  through  them,  which  almost  affixes  a  date 
to  them;  marks  the  when  and  where  they  were 
written. 

I  have  dwelt  the  longer  upon  what  I  conceive  the 
merit  of  these  poems,  because  I  have  been  hurt  by 
the  wantonness  (I  wish  I  could  treat  it  by  a  gentler 
name)  with  which  W.  H.  takes  every  occasion  of  in- 
sulting the  memory  of  Sir  Philip  Sydney.  But  the 
decisions  of  the  Author  of  Table  Talk,  &c.,  (most 
profound  and  subtle  where  they  are,  as  for  the  most 
part,  just)  are  more  safely  to  be  relied  upon,  on  sub- 
jects and  authors  he  has  a  partiality  for,  than  on  such 
as  he  has  conceived  an  accidental  prejudice  against. 
Milton  wrote  Sonnets,  and  was  a  king- hater ;  and  it 
was  congenial  perhaps  to  sacrifice  a  courtier  to  a 
patriot.  But  I  was  unwilling  to  lose  z.fine  idea  from 
my  mind.  The  noble  images,  passions,  sentiments, 
and  poetical  delicacies  of  character,  scattered  all  over 
the  Arcadia  (spite  of  some  stiffness  and  encumber- 
ment),  justify  to  me  the  character  which  his  contem- 
poraries have  left  us  of  the  writer.  I  cannot  think 
with  the  Critic,  that  Sir  Philip  Sydney  was  that  op- 
probrious thing  which  a  foolish  nobleman  in  his  inso- 
lent hostility  chose  to  term  him.  I  call  to  mind  the 
epitaph  made  on  him,  to  guide  me  to  juster  thoughts 


SIR  PHILIP   SYDNEY'S   SONNETS.  1 35 

of  him ;  and  I  repose  upon  the  beautiful  lines  in  the 
"Friend's  Passion  for  his  Astrophel,"  printed  with 
the  Elegies  of  Spenser  and  others. 


You  knew  —  who  knew  not  Astrophel? 
(That  I  should  live  to  say  I  knew, 
And  have  not  in  possession  still !)  — 
Things  known  permit  me  to  renew  — 
Of  him  you  know  his  merit  such, 
I  cannot  say  —  you  hear  —  too  much. 

Within  these  woods  of  Arcady 

He  chief  delight  and  pleasure 

And  on  the  mountain  Partheny, 

Upon  the  crystal  liquid  brook, 
The  Muses  met  him  every  day, 
That  taught  him  sing,  to  write,  and  say. 

When  he  descended  down  the  mount, 
His  personage  seemed  most  divine: 
A  thousand  graces  one  might  count 
Upon  his  lovely  chearful  eyne. 
To  hear  him  speak,  and  sweetly  smile, 
You  were  in  Paradise  the  while. 

A  sweet  attractive  kind  af  grace  ; 

A  full  assurance  given  by  looks; 

Continual  comfort  in  a  face  ^ 

The  lineaf?tents  of  Gospel  books  — 
I  trow  that  count'nance  cannot  lye, 
Whose  thoughts  are  legible  in  the  eye. 


136  SIR   PHILIP   SYDNEY'S    SONNETS. 

Above  all  others  this  is  he. 
Which  erst  approved  in  his  song, 
That  love  and  honour  might  agree, 
And  that  pure  love  will  do  no  wrong. 
Sweet  saints,  it  is  no  sin  or  blame 
To  love  a  man  of  virtuous  name. 

Did  never  Love  so  sweetly  breathe 

In  any  mortal  breast  before  : 

Did  never  Muse  inspire  beneath 

A  Poet's  brain  with  finer  store. 

He  wrote  of  Love  with  high  conceit. 
And  Beauty  rear'd  above  her  height. 

Or  let  any  one  read  the  deeper  sorrows  (grief 
running  into  rage)  in  the  Poem,  —  the  last  in  the 
collection  accompanying  the  above,  —  which  from 
internal  testimony  I  believe  to  be  Lord  Brooke's, — 
beginning  with  "  Silence  augmenteth  grief,"  —  and 
then  seriously  ask  himself,  whether  the  subject  of 
such  absorbing  and  confounding  regrets  could  have 
been  that  thing  which  Lord  Oxford  termed  him. 


NEWSPAPERS  THIRTY-FIVE   YEARS 
AGO. 


Dan  Stuart  once  told  us,  that  he  did  not  remember 
that  he  ever  deliberately  walked  into  the  Exhibition 
at  Somerset  House  in  his  life.  He  might  occasion- 
ally have  escorted  a  party  of  ladies  across  the  way 
that  were  going  in ;  but  he  never  went  in  of  his  own 
head.  Yet  the  office  of  the  Morning  Post  newspaper 
stood  then  just  where  it  does  now  —  we  are  carrying 
you  back,  Reader,  some  thirty  years  or  more  —  with 
its  gilt-globe -topt  front  facing  that  emporium  of  our 
artists'  grand  Annual  Exposure.  We  sometimes  wish, 
that  we  had  observed  the  same  abstinence  with 
Daniel. 

A  word  or  two  of  D.  S.  He  ever  appeared  to  us 
one  of  the  finest  tempered  of  Editors.  Perry,  of 
the  Morning  Chronicle,  was  equally  pleasant,  with  a 
dash,  no  slight  one  either,  of  the  courtier.  S.  was 
frank,  plain,  and  English  all  over.  We  have  worked 
for  both  these  gentlemen. 


138     NEWSPAPERS  THIRTY-FIVE  YEARS  AGO. 

It  is  soothing  to  contemplate  the  head  of  the 
Ganges;  to  trace  the  first  Httle  bubblings  of  a 
mighty  river; 

With  holy  reverence  to  approach  the  rocks, 
Whence  glide  the  streams  renowned  in  ancient  song. 

Fired  with  a  perusal  of  the  Abyssinian  Pilgrim's 
exploratory  ramblings  after  the  cradle  of  the  infant 
Nilus,  we  well  remember  on  one  fine  summer  holy- 
day  (a  "  whole  day's  leave  "  we  called  it  at  Christ's 
Hospital)  sallying  forth  at  rise  of  sun,  not  very  well 
provisioned  either  for  such  an  undertaking,  to  trace 
the  current  of  the  New  River  —  Middletonian  stream  ! 
—  to  its  scaturient  source,  as  we  had  read,  in  mead- 
ows by  fair  Amwell.  Gallantly  did  we  commence 
our  solitary  quest  —  for  it  was  essential  to  the  dig- 
nity of  a  Discovery,  that  no  eye  of  schoolboy,  save 
our  own,  should  beam  on  the  detection.  By  flowery 
spots,  and  verdant  lanes,  skirting  Hornsey,  Hope 
trained  us  on  in  many  a  baffling  turn ;  endless,  hope- 
less meanders,  as  it  seemed;  or  as  if  the  jealous 
waters  had  dodged  us,  reluctant  to  have  the  humble 
spot  of  their  nativity  revealed ;  till  spent,  and  nigh 
famished,  before  set  of  the  same  sun,  we  sate  down 
somewhere  by  Bowes  Farm,  near  Tottenham,  with 
a  tithe  of  our  proposed  labours  only  yet  accom- 
plished ;  sorely  convinced  in  spirit,  that  that  Brucian 
enterprise  was  as  yet  too  arduous  for  our  young 
shoulders. 


NEWSPAPERS  THIRTY-FIVE  YEARS  AGO.     1 39 

Not  more  refreshing  to  the  thirsty  curiosity  of  the 
traveller  is  the  tracing  of  some  mighty  waters  up  to 
their  shallow  fontlet,  than  it  is  to  a  pleased  and 
candid  reader  to  go  back  to  the  inexperienced  es- 
says, the  first  callow  flights  in  authorship,  of  some 
established  name  in  literature ;  from  the  Gnat  which 
preluded  to  the  ^neid,  to  the  Duck  which  Samuel 
Johnson  trod  on. 

In  those  days  every  Morning  Paper,  as  an  essential 
retainer  to  its  establishment,  kept  an  author,  who 
was  bound  to  furnish  daily  a  quantum  of  witty  para- 
graphs. Sixpence  a  joke  —  and  it  was  thought  pretty 
high  too  —  was  Dan  Stuart's  settled  remuneration  in 
these  cases.  The  chat  of  the  day,  scandal,  but,  above 
all,  dress,  furnished  the  material.  The  length  of  no 
paragraph  was  to  exceed  seven  lines.  Shorter  they 
might  be,  but  they  must  be  poignant. 

A  fashion  oi  flesh,  or  rather  //>/>^- coloured  hose  for 
the  ladies,  luckily  coming  up  at  the  juncture,  when 
we  were  on  our  probation  for  the  place  of  Chief 
Jester  to  S.'s  Paper,  established  our  reputation  in 
that  line.  We  were  pronounced  a  "capital  hand." 
O  the  conceits  which  we  varied  upon  red  in  all  its 
prismatic  differences !  from  the  trite  and  obvious 
flower  of  Cytherea,  to  the  flaming  costume  of  the 
lady  that  has  her  sitting  upon  "  many  waters."  Then 
there  was  the  collateral  topic  of  ancles.  What  an 
occasion  to   a   truly   chaste    writer,    like    ourself,    of 


140    NEWSPAPERS  THIRTY-FIVE  YEARS  AGO. 

touching  that  nice  brink,  and  yet  never  tumbling 
over  it,  of  a  seemingly  ever  approximating  something 
"  not  quite  proper ;  "  while,  like  a  skilful  posture- 
master,  balancing  betwixt  decorums  and  their  op- 
posites,  he  keeps  the  line,  from  which  a  hair's- 
breadth  deviation  is  destruction ;  hovering  in  the 
confines  of  light  and  darkness,  or  where  "  both  seem 
either ;  "  a  hazy  uncertain  delicacy ;  Autolycus-like 
in  the  Play,  still  putting  off  his  expectant  auditory 
with  "  Whoop,  do  me  no  harm,  good  man  !  "  But, 
above  all,  that  conceit  arrided  us  most  at  that  time, 
and  still  tickles  our  midriff  to  remember,  where,  al- 
lusively to  the  flight  of  Astraea  —  ultima  CcBlesttim 
terras  reliquit — we  pronounced  —  in  reference  to 
the  stockings  still  —  that  Modesty  taking  her  final 

LEAVE  OF  MORTALS,  HER  LAST  BlUSH  WAS  VISIBLE  IN 
HER   ASCENT   TO   THE    HEAVENS    BY   THE    TRACT     OF    THE 

GLOWING  INSTEP.  Thls  might  be  called  the  crown- 
ing conceit ;  and  was  esteemed  tolerable  writing  in 
those  days. 

But  the  fashion  of  jokes,  with  all  other  things, 
passes  away;  as  did  the  transient  mode  which  had 
so  favoured  us.  The  ancles  of  our  fair  friends  in 
a  few  weeks  began  to  reassume  their  whiteness,  and 
left  us  scarce  a  leg  to  stand  upon.  Other  female 
whims  followed,  but  none,  methought,  so  pregnant, 
so  invitatory  of  shrewd  conceits,  and  more  than 
single  meanings. 


NEWSPAPERS  THIRTY-FIVE  YEARS  AGO.     141 

Somebody  has  said,  that  to  swallow  six  cross-buns 
daily  consecutively  for  a  fortnight  would  surfeit  the 
stoutest  digestion.  But  to  have  to  furnish  as  many 
jokes  daily,  and  that  not  for  a  fortnight,  but  for  a 
long  twelvemonth,  as  we  were  constrained  to  do, 
was  a  little  harder  execution.  "  Man  goeth  forth  to 
his  work  until  the  evening "  —  from  a  reasonable 
hour  in  the  morning,  we  presume  it  was  meant. 
Now  as  our  main  occupation  took  us  up  from  eight 
till  five  every  day  in  the  City ;  and  as  our  evening 
hours,  at  that  time  of  life,  had  generally  to  do  with 
any  thing  rather  than  business,  it  follows,  that  the 
only  time  we  could  spare  for  this  manufactory  of 
jokes  —  our  supplementary  livelihood,  that  supplied 
us  in  every  want  beyond  mere  bread  and  cheese  — 
was  exactly  that  part  of  the  day  which  (as  we  have 
heard  of  No  Man's  Land)  may  be  fitly  denominated 
No  Man's  Time ;  that  is,  no  time  in  which  a  man 
ought  to  be  up,  and  awake,  in.  To  speak  more 
plainly,  it  is  that  time,  of  an  hour,  or  an  hour  and 
a  half  s  duration,  in  which  a  man,  whose  occasions 
call  him  up  so  preposterously,  has  to  wait  for  his 
breakfast. 

O  those  headaches  at  dawn  of  day,  when  at  five, 
or  half-past-five  in  summer,  and  not  much  later  in 
the  dark  seasons,  we  were  compelled  to  rise,  having 
been  perhaps  not  above  four  hours  in  bed  —  (for 
we  were  no  go-to-beds   with   the   lamb,  though   we 


142     NEWSPAPERS  THIRTY-FIVE  YEARS  AGO. 

anticipated  the  lark  oftimes  in  her  rising  —  we  Hked 
a  parting  cup  at  midnight,  as  all  young  men  did  be- 
fore these  eifeminate  times,  and  to  have  our  friends 
about  us  —  we  were  not  constellated  under  Aqua- 
rius, that  watery  sign,  and  therefore  incapable  of 
Bacchus,  cold,  washy,  bloodless  —  we  were  none  of 
your  Basilian  water- sponges,  nor  had  taken  our 
degrees  at  Mount  Ague  —  we  were  right  toping 
Capulets,  jolly  companions,  we  and  they)  —  but  to 
have  to  get  up,  as  we  said  before,  curtailed  of  half 
our  fair  sleep,  fasting,  with  only  a  dim  vista  qf  re- 
freshing Bohea  in  the  distance  —  to  be  necessitated 
to  rouse  ourselves  at  the  detestable  rap  of  an  old 
hag  of  a  domestic,  who  seemed  to  take  a  diabolical 
pleasure  in  her  announcement  that  it  was  "time  to 
rise ;  "  and  whose  chappy  knuckles  we  have  often 
yearned  to  amputate,  and  string  them  up  at  our 
chamber  door,  to  be  a  terror  to  all  such  unseason- 
able rest-breakers  in  future 

"  Facil "  and  sweet,  as  Virgil  sings,  had  been  the 
"  descending  "  of  the  over-night,  balmy  the  first  sink- 
ing of  the  heavy  head  upon  the  pillow;  but  to  get 
up,  as  he  goes  on  to  say, 

—  revocare  gradus,  superasque  evadere  ad  auras  — 

and  to  get  up  moreover  to  make  jokes  with  malice 
prepended  —  there  was  the  "labour,"  there  the 
"  work." 


NEWSPAPERS  THIRTY-FIVE  YEARS  AGO.     143 

No  Egyptian  taskmaster  ever  devised  a  slavery 
like  to  that,  our  slavery.  No  fractious  operants  ever 
turned  out  for  half  the  tyranny,  which  this  necessity 
exercised  upon  us.  Half  a  dozen  jests  in  a  day 
(bating  Sundays  too),  why,  it  seems  nothing!  We 
make  twice  the  number  every  day  in  our  lives  as  a 
matter  of  course,  and  claim  no  Sabbatical  exemp- 
tions. But  then  they  come  into  our  head.  But 
when  the  head  has  to  go  out  to  them  —  when  the 
mountain  must  go  to  Mahomet  — 

Reader,  try  it  for  once,  only  for  one  short 
twelvemonth. 

It  was  not  every  week  that  a  fashion  of  pink 
stockings  came  up ;  but  mostly,  instead  of  it,  some 
rugged,  untractable  subject;  some  topic  impossible 
to  be  contorted  into  the  risible ;  some  feature,  upon 
which  no  smile  could  play ;  some  flint,  from  which 
no  process  of  ingenuity  could  procure  a  distillation. 
There  they  lay ;  there  your  appointed  tale  of  brick- 
making  was  set  before  you,  which  you  must  finish, 
with  or  without  straw,  as  it  happened.  The  craving 
Dragon  —  the  Public  —  like  him  in  Bel's  temple  — 
must  be  fed ;  it  expected  its  daily  rations ;  and 
Daniel,  and  ourselves,  to  do  us  justice,  did  the  best 
we  could  on  this  side  bursting  him. 

While  we  were  wringing  out  coy  sprightlinesses  for 
the  Post,  and  writhing  under  the  toil  of  what  is  called 
"easy   writing,"    Bob    Allen,   our   quondam   school- 


144    NEWSPAPERS  THIRTY-FIVE  YEARS  AGO. 

fellow,  was  tapping  his  impracticable  brains  in  a  like 
service  for  the  "  Oracle."  Not  that  Robert  troubled 
himself  much  about  wit.  If  his  paragraphs  had  a 
sprightly  air  about  them,  it  was  sufficient.  He  car- 
ried this  nonchalance  so  far  at  last,  that  a  matter  of 
intelligence,  and  that  no  very  important  one,  was  not 
seldom  palmed  upon  his  employers  for  a  good  jest; 
for  example  sake  —  "  Walking  yesterday  morning  casu- 
ally down  Snow  Hilly  who  should  we  jneet  but  Mr, 
Deputy  Humphreys  !  we  rejoice  to  add  that  the  worthy 
Deputy  appeared  to  enjoy  a  good  state  of  health.  We 
do  not  remember  ever  to  have  seen  him  look  better.^* 
This  gentleman,  so  surprisingly  met  upon  Snow  Hill, 
from  some  peculiarities  in  gait  or  gesture,  was  a 
constant  butt  for  mirth  to  the  small  paragraph- 
mongers  of  the  day ;  and  our  friend  thought  that  he 
might  have  his  fling  at  him  with  the  rest.  We  met 
A.  in  Holborn  shortly  after  this  extraordinary  ren- 
counter, which  he  told  with  tears  of  satisfaction  in 
his  eyes,  and  chuckling  at  the  anticipated  effects  of 
its  announcement  next  day  in  the  paper.  We  did 
not  quite  comprehend  where  the  wit  of  it  lay  at  the 
time  ;  nor  was  it  easy  to  be  detected,  when  the  thing 
came  out,  advantaged  by  type  and  letter-press.  He 
had  better  have  met  any  thing  that  morning  than  a 
Common  Council  Man.  His  services  were  shortly 
after  dispensed  with,  on  the  plea  that  his  paragraphs 
of  late  had  been  deficient   in   point.     The   one   in 


NEWSPAPERS  THIRTY-FIVE  YEARS  AGO.     145 

question,  it  must  be  owned,  had  an  air,  in  the  open- 
ing especially,  proper  to  awaken  curiosity ;  and  the 
sentiment,  or  moral,  wears  the  aspect  of  humanity, 
and  good  neighbourly  feeling.  But  somehow  the 
conclusion  was  not  judged  altogether  to  answer  to 
the  magnificent  promise  of  the  premises.  We  traced 
our  friend's  pen  afterwards  in  the  "True  Briton," 
the  "Star,"  the  "  Traveller,"  —  from  all  which  he  was 
successively  dismissed,  the  Proprietors  having  "no 
further  occasion  for  his  services."  Nothing  was 
easier  than  to  detect  him.  When  wit  failed,  or 
topics  ran  low,  there  constantly  appeared  the  follow- 
ing—  "///>  not  generally  known  that  the  three  Blue 
Balls  at  the  Pawnbrokers'  shops  are  the  ancient  arms 
of  Lombardy.  The  Lombards  were  the  first  money- 
brokers  in  Europe''  Bob  has  done  more  to  set  the 
public  right  on  this  important  point  of  blazonry, 
than  the  whole  College  of  Heralds. 

The  appointment  of  a  regular  wit  has  long  ceased 
to  be  a  part  of  the  economy  of  a  Morning  Paper. 
Editors  find  their  own  jokes,  or  do  as  well  without 
them.  Parson  Este,  and  Topham,  brought  up  the 
set  custom  of  "witty  paragraphs"  first  in  the 
"World."  Boaden  was  a  reigning  paragraphist  in 
his  day,  and  succeeded  poor  Allen  in  the  Oracle. 
But,  as  we  said,  the  fashion  of  jokes  passes  away ; 
and  it  would  be  difficult  to  discover  in  the  Biog- 
rapher of  Mrs.   Siddons,  any  traces  of  that  vivacity 


146     NEWSPAPERS  THIRTY-FIVE  YEARS  AGO. 

and  fancy  which  charmed  the  whole  town  at  the 
commencement  of  the  present  century.  Even  the 
prelusive  delicacies  of  the  present  writer  —  the  curt 
"Astraean  allusion" — would  be  thought  pedantic, 
and  out  of  date,  in  these  days. 

From  the  office  of  the  Morning  Post  (for  we  may 
as  well  exhaust  our  Newspaper  Reminiscences  at 
once)  by  change  of  property  in  the  paper,  we  were 
transferred,  mortifying  exchange  !  to  the  office  of 
the  Albion  Newspaper,  late  Rackstrow's  Museum,  in 
Fleet- street.  What  a  transition  —  from  a  handsome 
apartment,  from  rose- wood  desks,  and  silver- ink- 
stands, to  an  office  —  no  office,  but  a  den  rather, 
but  just  redeemed  from  the  occupation  of  dead 
monsters,  of  which  it  seemed  redolent  —  from  the 
centre  of  loyalty  and  fashion,  to  a  focus  of  vulgarity 
and  sedition !  Here  in  murky  closet,  inadequate 
from  its  square  contents  to  the  receipt  of  the  two 
bodies  of  Editor,  and  humble  paragraph- maker, 
together  at  one  time,  sat  in  the  discharge  of  his 
new  Editorial  functions  (the  "  Bigod "  of  Elia)  the 
redoubted  John  Fenwick. 

F.,  without  a  guinea  in  his  pocket,  and  having  left 
not  many  in  the  pockets  of  his  friends  whom  he 
might  command,  had  purchased  (on  tick  doubtless) 
the  whole  and  sole  Editorship,  Proprietorship,  with 
all  the  rights  and  titles  (such  as  they  were  worth)  of 
the   Albion,   from   one    Lovell ;    of  whom  we  know 


NEWSPAPERS  THIRTY-FIVE  YEARS  AGO.     147 

nothing,  save  that  he  had  stood  in  the  pillory  for  a 
libel  on  the  Prince  of  Wales.  With  this  hopeless 
concern  —  for  it  had  been  sinking  ever  since  its 
commencement,  and  could  now  reckon  upon  not 
more  than  a  hundred  subscribers  —  F.  resolutely  de- 
termined upon  pulling  down  the  Government  in  the 
first  instance,  and  making  both  our  fortunes  by  way 
of  corollary.  For  seven  weeks  and  more  did  this 
infatuated  Democrat  go  about  borrowing  seven  shil- 
ling pieces,  and  lesser  coin,  to  meet  the  daily  de- 
mands of  the  Stamp  Office,  which  allowed  no  credit 
to  publications  of  that  side  in  politics.  An  outcast 
from  politer  bread,  we  attached  our  small  talents  to 
the  forlorn  fortunes  of  our  friend.  Our  occupation 
now  was  to  write  treason. 

Recollections  of  feelings  —  which  were  all  that 
now  remained  from  our  first  boyish  heats  kindled  by 
the  French  Revolution,  when  if  we  were  misled, 
we  erred  in  the  company  of  some,  who  are  ac- 
counted very  good  men  now  —  rather  than  any  ten- 
dency at  this  time  to  Republican  doctrines  —  assisted 
us  in  assuming  a  style  of  writing,  while  the  paper 
lasted,  consonant  in  no  very  under  tone  to  the  right 
earnest  fanaticism  of  F.  Our  cue  was  now  to  in- 
sinuate, rather  than  recommend,  possible  abdica- 
tions. Blocks,  axes,  Whitehall  tribunals,  were  cov- 
ered with  flowers  of  so  cunning  a  periphrasis  —  as 
Mr.  Bayes  says,  never  naming  the  thing  directly  — 


148    NEWSPAPERS  THIRTY-FIVE  YEARS  AGO. 

that  the  keen  eye  of  an  Attorney  General  was  in- 
sufficient to  detect  the  lurking  snake  among  them. 
There  were  times,  indeed,  when  we  sighed  for  our 
more  gentleman-like  occupation  under  Stuart.  But 
with  change  of  masters  it  is  ever  change  of  service. 
Already  one  paragraph,  and  another,  as  we  learned 
afterwards  from  a  gentleman  at  the  Treasury,  had 
begun  to  be  marked  at  that  office,  with  a  view  of 
its  being  submitted  at  least  to  the  attention  of  the 
proper  Law  Officers  —  when  an  unlucky,  or  rather 

lucky   epigram  from   our   pen,  aimed    a   Sir  J s 

M h,  who  was  on  the  eve  of  departing  for  India 

to  reap  the  fruits  of  his  apostacy,  as  F.  pronounced 
it,  (it  is  hardly  worth  particularising),  happening  to 
offend  the  nice  sense  of  Lord,  or,  as  he  then  de- 
lighted to  be  called,  Citizen  Stanhope,  deprived  F. 
at  once  of  the  last  hopes  of  a  guinea  from  the  last 
patron  that  had  stuck  by  us;  and  breaking  up  our 
establishment,  left  us  to  the  safe,  but  somewhat  mor- 
tifying, neglect  of  the  Crown  Lawyers.  —  It  was 
about  this  time,  or  a  little  earlier,  that  Dan  Stuart 
made  that  curious  confession  to  us,  that  he  had 
"  never  deliberately  walked  into  an  Exhibition  at 
Somerset  House  in  his  life." 


BARRENNESS  OF  THE  IMAGINATIVE 
FACULTY  IN  THE  PRODUCTIONS 
OF   MODERN    ART. 


Hogarth  excepted,  can  we  produce  any  one  painter 
within  the  last  fifty  years,  or  since  the  humour  of 
exhibiting  began,  that  has  treated  a  story  imagina- 
tively ?  By  this  we  mean,  upon  whom  his  subject 
has  so  acted,  that  it  has  seemed  to  direct  him  —  not 
to  be  arranged  by  him  ?  Any  upon  whom  its  leading 
or  collateral  points  have  impressed  themselves  so 
tyrannically,  that  he  dared  not  treat  it  otherwise, 
lest  he  should  falsify  a  revelation?  Any  that  has 
imparted  to  his  compositions,  not  merely  so  much 
truth  as  is  enough  to  convey  a  story  with  clearness, 
but  that  individualising  property,  which  should  keep 
the  subject  so  treated  distinct  in  feature  from  every 
other  subject,  however  similar,  and  to  common  ap- 
prehensions almost  identical ;  so  as  that  we  might 
say,  this  and  this  part  could  have  found  an  appro- 
priate place  in  no  other  picture  in  the  world  but 
this?     Is  there    anything  in   modern   art  —  we    will 


150  ON  THE  PRODUCTIONS  OF  MODERN  ART. 

not  demand  that  it  should  be  equal  —  but  in  any 
way  analogous  to  what  Titian  has  effected,  in  that 
wonderful  bringing  together  of  two  times  in  the 
"Ariadne,"  in  the  National  Gallery?  Precipitous, 
with  his  reeling  Satyr  rout  about  him,  re-peopling 
and  re-illuming  suddenly  the  waste  places,  drunk 
with  a  new  fury  beyond  the  grape,  Bacchus,  born  in 
fire,  fire-like  flings  himself  at  the  Cretan.  This  is 
the  time  present.  With  this  telling  of  the  story  an 
artist,  and  no  ordinary  one,  might  remain  richly 
proud.  Guido,  in  his  harmonious  version  of  it,  saw 
no  further.  But  from  the  depths  of  the  imaginative 
spirit  Titian  has  recalled  past  time,  and  laid  it  con- 
tributory with  the  present  to  one  simultaneous  effect. 
With  the  desert  all  ringing  with  the  mad  cymbals  of 
his  followers,  made  lucid  with  the  presence  and  new 
offers  of  a  god,  —  as  if  unconscious  of  Bacchus,  or 
but  idly  casting  her  eyes  as  upon  some  unconcern- 
ing  pageant  —  her  soul  undistracted  from  Theseus  — 
Ariadne  is  still  pacing  the  solitary  shore,  in  as  much 
heart-silence,  and  in  almost  the  same  local  solitude, 
with  which  she  awoke  at  day- break  to  catch  the 
forlorn  last  glances  of  the  sail  that  bore  away  the 
Athenian. 

Here  are  two  points  miraculously  co-uniting ;  fierce 
society,  with  the  feeling  of  solitude  still  absolute ; 
noon-day  revelations,  with  the  accidents  of  the  dull 
grey   dawn   unquenched   and   lingering;  the  present 


ON  THE  PRODUCTIONS  OF  MODERN  ART.  15  I 

Bacchus,  with  the  past  Ariadne;  two  stories,  with 
double  Time ;  separate,  and  harmonising.  Had  the 
artist  made  the  woman  one  shade  less  indifferent  to 
the  God ;  still  more,  had  she  expressed  a  rapture  at 
his  advent,  where  would  have  been  the  story  of  the 
mighty  desolation  of  the  heart  previous?  merged  in 
the  insipid  accident  of  a  flattering  offer  met  with  a 
welcome  acceptance.  The  broken  heart  for  Theseus 
was  not  lightly  to  be  pieced  up  by  a  God. 

We  have  before  us  a  fine  rough  print,  from  a  pic- 
ture by  Raphael  in  the  Vatican.  It  is  the  Presenta- 
tion of  the  new-born  Eve  to  Adam  by  the  Almighty. 
A  fairer  mother  of  mankind  we  might  imagine,  and  a 
goodlier  sire  perhaps  of  men  since  born.  But  these 
are  matters  subordinate  to  the  conception  of  the 
situation^  displayed  in  this  extraordinary  production. 
A  tolerably  modern  artist  would  have  been  satisfied 
with  tempering  certain  raptures  of  connubial  anticipa- 
tion, with  a  suitable  acknowledgement  to  the  Giver 
of  the  blessing,  in  the  countenance  of  the  first  bride- 
groom ;  something  like  the  divided  attention  of  the 
child  (Adam  was  here  a  child  man)  between  the 
given  toy,  and  the  mother  who  had  just  blest  it 
with  the  bauble.  This  is  the  obvious,  the  first-sight 
view,  the  superficial.  An  artist  of  a  higher  grade, 
considering  the  awful  presence  they  were  in,  would 
have  taken  care  to  subtract  something  from  the  ex- 
pression of  the  more  human  passion,  and  to  heighten 


152  ON  THE  PRODUCTIONS  OF  MODERN  ART. 

the  more  spiritual  one.  This  would  be  as  much  as 
an  exhibition-goer,  from  the  opening  of  Somerset 
House  to  last  year's  show,  has  been  encouraged  to 
look  for.  It  is  obvious  to  hint  at  a  lower  expression, 
yet  in  a  picture,  that  for  respects  of  drawing  and 
colouring,  might  be  deemed  not  wholly  inadmissible 
within  these  art-fostering  walls,  in  which  the  raptures 
should  be  as  ninety-nine,  the  gratitude  as  one,  or 
perhaps  Zero  !  By  neither  the  one  passion  nor  the 
other  has  Raphael  expounded  the  situation  of  Adam. 
Singly  upon  his  brow  sits  the  absorbing  sense  of 
wonder  at  the  created  miracle.  The  moment  is 
seized  by  the  intuitive  artist,  perhaps  not  self-con- 
scious of  his  art,  in  which  neither  of  the  conflicting 
emotions  —  a  moment  how  abstracted  —  have  had 
time  to  spring  up,  or  to  battle  for  indecorous  mas- 
tery. —  We  have  seen  a  landscape  of  a  justly  ad- 
mired neoteric,  in  which  he  aimed  at  delineating  a 
fiction,  one  of  the  most  severely  beautiful  in  an- 
tiquity—  the    gardens    of  the    Hesperides.      To    do 

Mr. justice,  he  had  painted  a  laudable  orchard, 

with  fitting  seclusion,  and  a  veritable  dragon  (of 
which  a  Polypheme  by  Poussin  is  somehow  a  fac- 
simile for  the  situation),  looking  over  into  the  world 
shut  out  backwards,  so  that  none  but  a  "  still-climb- 
ing Hercules "  could  hope  to  catch  a  peep  at  the 
admired  Ternary  of  Recluses.  No  conventual  porter 
could  keep  his  keys  better  than  this  custos  with  the 


ON  THE  PRODUCTIONS  OF  MODERN  ART.     15^ 

"  lidless  eyes."  He  not  only  sees  that  none  do  in- 
trude into  that  privacy,  but,  as  clear  as  daylight, 
that  none  but  Hercules  aut  Diabolus  by  any  manner 
of  means  can.  So  far  all  is  well.  We  have  absolute 
solitude  here  or  nowhere.  Ab  extra  the  damsels  are 
snug  enough.  But  here  the  artist's  courage  seems 
to  have  failed  him.  He  began  to  pity  his  pretty 
charge,  and,  to  comfort  the  irksomeness,  has  peopled 
their  solitude  with  a  bevy  of  fair  attendants,  maids 
of  honour,  or  ladies  of  the  bed-chamber,  according 
to  the  approved  etiquette  at  a  court  of  the  nine- 
teenth century;  giving  to  the  whole  scene  the  air 
oidifete  champetre,  if  we  will  but  excuse  the  absence 
of  the  gentlemen.  This  is  well,  and  Watteauish. 
But  what  is  become  of  the   solitary  mystery  —  the 

Daughters  three, 
That  sing  around  the  golden  tree  ? 

This  is  not  the  way  in  which  Poussin  would  have 
treated  this  subject. 

The  paintings,  or  rather  the  stupendous  architec- 
tural designs,  of  a  modern  artist,  have  been  urged  as 
objections  to  the  theory  of  our  motto.  They  are  of 
a  character,  we  confess,  to  stagger  it.  His  towered 
structures  are  of  the  highest  order  of  the  material 
sublime.  Whether  they  were  dreams,  or  transcripts 
of  some  elder  workmanship  —  Assyrian  ruins  old  — 
restored  by  this  mighty  artist,  they  satisfy  our  most 


154    ON  THE  PRODUCTIONS  OF  MODERN  ART. 

stretched  and  craving  conceptions  of  the  glories  of 
the  antique  world.  It  is  a  pity  that  they  were  ever 
peopled.  On  that  side,  the  imagination  of  the  artist 
halts,  and  appears  defective.  Let  us  examine  the 
point  of  the  story  in  the  "  Belshazzar's  Feast."  We 
will  introduce  it  by  an  apposite  anecdote. 

The  court  historians  of  the  day  record,  that  at 
the  first  dinner  given  by  the  late  King  (then  Prince 
Regent)  at  the  Pavilion,  the  following  characteristic 
frolic  was  played  off.  The  guests  were  select  and 
admiring ;  the  banquet  profuse  and  admirable ;  the 
lights  lustrous  and  oriental ;  the  eye  was  perfectly 
dazzled  with  the  display  of  plate,  among  which  the 
great  gold  salt-cellar,  brought  from  the  regalia  in  the 
Tower  for  this  especial  purpose,  itself  a  tower  !  stood 
conspicuous  for  its  magnitude.  And  now  the  Rev. 
*  *  *  *  the  then  admired  court  Chaplain,  was  pro- 
ceeding with  the  grace,  when,  at  a  signal  given,  the 
lights  were  suddenly  overcast,  and  a  huge  transparency 
was  discovered,  in  which  glittered  in  golden  letters  — 

"  Brighton  —  Earthquake  —  Swallow-up- 

ALIVE  !  " 

Imagine  the  confusion  of  the  guests;  the  Georges 
and  garters,  jewels,  bracelets,  moulted  upon  the  occa- 
sion !  The  fans  dropt,  and  picked  up  the  next  morn- 
ing by  the  sly  court  pages  !  Mrs.  Fitz-what  's-her- 
name  fainting,  and  the  Countess  of  *  *  *  *  holding 


ON  THE  PRODUCTIONS  OF  MODERN  ART.     155 

the  smelling  bottle,  till  the  good  humoured  Prince 
caused  harmony  to  be  restored  by  calling  in  fresh 
candles,  and  declaring  that  the  whole  was  nothing 
but  a  pantomime  hoax^  got  up  by  the  ingenious  Mr. 
Farley,  of  Covent  Garden,  from  hints  which  his  Royal 
Highness  himself  had  furnished  !  Then  imagine 
the  infinite  applause  that  followed,  the  mutual  rally- 
ings,  the  declarations  that  "  they  were  not  much 
frightened,"  of  the  assembled  galaxy. 

The  point  of  time  in  the  picture  exactly  answers 
to  the  appearance  of  the  transparency  in  the  anec- 
dote. The  huddle,  the  flutter,  the  bustle,  the  es- 
cape, the  alarm,  and  the  mock  alarm ;  the  prettinesses 
heightened  by  consternation;  the  courtier's  fear 
which  was  flattery,  and  the  lady's  which  was  affecta- 
tion j  all  that  we  may  conceive  to  have  taken  place 
in  a  mob  of  Brighton  courtiers,  sympathising  with  the 
well-acted  surprise  of  their  sovereign ;  all  this,  and 
no  more,  is  exhibited  by  the  well-dressed  lords  and 
ladies  in  the  Hall  of  Belus.  Just  this  sort  of  con- 
sternation we  have  seen  among  a  flock  of  disquieted 
wild  geese  at  the  report  only  of  a  gun  having  gone 
ofl'! 

But  is  this  vulgar  fright,  this  mere  animal  anxiety 
for  the  preservation  of  their  persons,  —  such  as  we 
have  witnessed  at  a  theatre,  when  a  slight  alarm  of 
fire  has  been  given  —  an  adequate  exponent  of  a 
supernatural  terror?  the  way  in  which  the  finger  of 


156    ON  THE  PRODUCTIONS  OF  MODERN  ART. 

God,  writing  judgments,  would  have  been  met  by  the 
withered  conscience?  There  is  a  human  fear,  and  a 
divine  fear.  The  one  is  disturbed,  restless,  and  bent 
upon  escape.  The  other  is  bowed  down,  effortless, 
passive.  When  the  spirit  appeared  before  Eliphaz  in 
the  visions  of  the  night,  and  the  hair  of  his  flesh  stood 
up,  was  it  in  the  thoughts  of  the  Temanite  to  ring  the 
bell  of  his  chamber^  or  to  call  up  the  servants?  But 
let  us  see  in  the  text  what  there  is  to  justify  all  this 
huddle  of  vulgar  consternation. 

From  the  words  of  Daniel  it  appears  that  Belshazzar 
had  made  a  great  feast  to  a  thousand  of  his  lords,  and 
drank  wine  before  the  thousand.  The  golden  and 
silver  vessels  are  gorgeously  enumerated,  with  the 
princes,  the  king's  concubines,  and  his  wives.  Then 
follows  — 

"  In  the  same  hour  came  forth  fingers  of  a  man's 
hand,  and  wrote  over  against  the  candlestick  upon 
the  plaster  of  the  wall  of  the  king's  palace ;  and  the 
king  saw  the  part  of  the  hand  that  wrote.  Then  the 
king's  countenance  was  changed,  and  his  thoughts 
troubled  him,  so  that  the  joints  of  his  loins  were 
loosened,  and  his  knees  smote  one  against  another." 

This  is  the  plain  text.  By  no  hint  can  it  be  other- 
wise inferred,  but  that  the  appearance  was  solely  con- 
fined to  the  fancy  of  Belshazzar,  that  his  single  brain 
was  troubled.  Not  a  word  is  spoken  of  its  being  seen 
by  any  else  there  present,  not  even  by  the  queen  her- 


ON  THE  PRODUCTIONS  OF  MODERN  ART.  157 

self,  who  merely  undertakes  for  the  interpretation  of 
the  phenomenon,  as  related  to  her,  doubtless,  by  her 
husband.  The  lords  are  simply  said  to  be  astonished  ; 
/.  e.  at  the  trouble  and  the  change  of  countenance  in 
their  sovereign.  Even  the  prophet  does  not  appear 
to  have  seen  the  scroll,  which  the  king  saw.  He 
recalls  it  only,  as  Joseph  did  the  Dream  to  the  King 
of  Egypt.  "  Then  was  the  part  of  the  hand  sent  from 
him  [the  Lord],  and  this  writing  was  written."  He 
speaks  of  the  phantasm  as  past. 

Then  what  becomes  of  this  needless  multiplication 
of  the  miracle?  this  message  to  a  royal  conscience, 
singly  expressed  —  for  it  was  said,  "  thy  kingdom  is 
divided,"  —  simultaneously  impressed  upon  the  fan- 
cies of  a  thousand  courtiers,  who  were  impHed  in  it 
neither  directly  nor  grammatically? 

But  admitting  the  artist's  own  version  of  the  story, 
and  that  the  sight  was  seen  also  by  the  thousand 
courtiers  —  let  it  have  been  visible  to  all  Babylon  — 
as  the  knees  of  Belshazzar  were  shaken,  and  his 
countenance  troubled,  even  so  would  the  knees  of 
every  man  in  Babylon,  and  their  countenances,  as  of 
an  individual  man,  been  troubled ;  bowed,  bent  down, 
so  would  they  have  remained,  stupor-fixed,  with  no 
thought  of  struggling  with  that  inevitable  judgment. 

Not  all  that  is  optically  possible  to  be  seen,  is  to 
be  shown  in  every  picture.  The  eye  delightedly 
dwells  upon  the  brilliant  individualities  in  a  "  Marriage 


158  ON  THE  PRODUCTIONS  OF  MODERN  ART. 

at  Cana,"  by  Veronese,  or  Titian,  to  the  very  texture 
and  colour  of  the  wedding  garments,  the  ring  gUtter- 
ing  upon  the  bride's  fingers,  the  metal  and  fashion  of 
the  wine  pots ;  for  at  such  seasons  there  is  leisure  and 
luxury  to  be  curious.  But  in  a  "  day  of  judgment,"  or 
in  a  "  day  of  lesser  horrors,  yet  divine,"  as  at  the  im- 
pious feast  of  Belshazzar,  the  eye  should  see,  as  the 
actual  eye  of  an  agent  or  patient  in  the  immediate 
scene  would  see,  only  in  masses  and  indistinction. 
Not  only  the  female  attire  and  jewelry  exposed  to  the 
critical  eye  of  the  fashion,  as  minutely  as  the  dresses 
in  a  lady's  magazine,  in  the  criticised  picture, — but 
perhaps  the  curiosities  of  anatomical  science,  and 
studied  diversities  of  posture  in  the  falling  angels  and 
sinners  of  Michael  Angelo,  —  have  no  business  in 
their  great  subjects.     There  was  no  leisure  of  them. 

By  a  wise  falsification,  the  great  masters  of  painting 
got  at  their  true  conclusions;  by  not  showing  the 
actual  appearances,  that  is,  all  that  was  to  be  seen  at 
any  given  moment  by  an  indifferent  eye,  but  only 
what  the  eye  might  be  supposed  to  see  in  the  doing 
or  suffering  of  some  portentous  action.  Suppose  the 
moment  of  the  swallowing  up  of  Pompeii.  There 
they  were  to  be  seen  —  houses,  columns,  architectural 
proportions,  differences  of  public  and  private  build- 
ings, men  and  women  at  their  standing  occupations, 
the  diversified  thousand  postures,  attitudes,  dresses, 
in   some   confusion  truly,   but   physically  they   were 


ON  THE  PRODUCTIONS  OF  MODERN  ART.  159 

visible.  But  what  eye  saw  them  at  that  eclipsing 
moment,  which  reduces  confusion  to  a  kind  of  unity, 
and  when  the  senses  are  upturned  from  their  pro- 
prieties, when  sight  and  hearing  are  a  feeling  only? 
A  thousand  years  have  passed,  and  we  are  at  leisure 
to  contemplate  the  weaver  fixed  standing  at  his 
shuttle,  the  baker  at  his  oven,  and  to  turn  over  with 
antiquarian  coolness  the  pots  and  pans  of  Pompeii. 

"  Sun,  stand  thou  still  upon  Gibeah,  and  thou, 
Moon,  in  the  valley  of  Ajalon."  Who,  in  reading 
this  magnificent  Hebraism,  in  his  conception,  sees 
aught  but  the  heroic  sun  of  Nun,  with  the  out- 
stretched arm,  and  the  greater  and  lesser  light  obse- 
quious? Doubtless  there  were  to  be  seen  hill  and 
dale,  and  chariots  and  horsemen,  on  open  plain,  or 
winding  by  secret  defiles,  and  all  the  circumstances 
and  stratagems  of  war.  But  whose  eyes  would  have 
been  conscious  of  this  array  at  the  interposition  of 
the  synchronic  miracle?  Yet  in  the  picture  of  this 
subject  by  the  artist  of  the  "  Belshazzar's  Feast  "  —  no 
ignoble  work  either  —  the  marshalling  and  landscape 
of  the  war  is  everything,  the  miracle  sinks  into  an 
anecdote  of  the  day ;  and  the  eye  may  ''  dart  through 
rank  and  file  traverse  "  for  some  minutes,  before  it 
shall  discover,  among  his  armed  followers,  which  is 
Joshua  !  Not  modern  art  alone,  but  ancient,  where 
only  it  is  to  be  found  if  anywhere,  can  be  detected 
erring,  from  defect  of  this  imaginative  faculty.     The 


l60    ON  THE  PRODUCTIONS  OF  MODERN  ART. 

world  has  nothing  to  show  of  the  preternatural  in 
painting,  transcending  the  figure  of  Lazarus  bursting 
his  grave-clothes,  in  the  great  picture  at  Angerstein's. 
It  seems  a  thing  between  two  beings.  A  ghastly 
horror  at  itself  struggles  with  newly-apprehending 
gratitude  at  second  life  bestowed.  It  cannot  forget 
that  it  was  a  ghost.  It  has  hardly  felt  that  it  is  a 
body.  It  has  to  tell  of  the  world  of  spirits.  —  Was  it 
from  a  feeling,  that  the  crowd  of  half-impassioned 
by-standers,  and  the  still  more  irrelevant  herd  of 
passers-by  at  a  distance,  who  have  not  heard  or  but 
faintly  have  been  told  of  the  passing  miracle,  ad- 
mirable as  they  are  in  design  and  hue  —  for  it  is 
a  glorified  work  —  do  not  respond  adequately  to  the 
action  —  that  the  single  figure  of  the  Lazarus  has 
been  attributed  to  Michael  Angelo,  and  the  mighty 
Sebastian  unfairly  robbed  of  the  fame  of  the  greater 
half  of  the  interest?  Now  that  there  were  not  in- 
diiferent  passers-by  within  actual  scope  of  the  eyes 
of  those  present  at  the  miracle,  to  whom  the  sound 
of  it  had  but  faintly,  or  not  at  all,  reached,  it  would 
be  hardihood  to  deny ;  but  would  they  see  them  ?  or 
can  the  mind  in  the  conception  of  it  admit  of  such 
unconcerning  objects?  can  it  think  of  them  at  all? 
or  what  associating  league  to  the  imagination  can 
there  be  between  the  seers,  and  the  seers  not,  of  a 
presential  miracle? 

Were  an  artist  to  paint  upon  demand  a  picture  of 


ON  THE  PRODUCTIONS  OF  MODERN  ART.     l6l 

a  Dryad,  we  will  ask  whether,  in  the  present  low  state 
of  expectation,  the  patron  would  not,  or  ought  not  to 
be  fully  satisfied  with  a  beautiful  naked  figure  re- 
cumbent under  wide-stretched  oaks?  Disseat  those 
woods,  and  place  the  same  figure  among  fountains, 
and  falls  of  pellucid  water,  and  you  have  a  —  Naiad  ! 
Not  so  in  a  rough  print  we  have  seen  after  JuHo 
Romano,  we  think  —  for  it  is  long  since  —  there,  by 
no  process,  with  mere  change  of  scene,  could  the 
figure  have  reciprocated  characters.  Long,  grotesque, 
fantastic,  yet  with  a  grace  of  her  own,  beautiful  in 
convolution  and  distortion,  linked  to  her  connatural 
tree,  co -twisting  with  its  limbs  her  own,  till  both 
seemed  either  —  these,  animated  branches ;  those, 
disanimated  members  —  yet  the  animal  and  vege- 
table lives  sufficiently  kept  distinct  —  his  Dryad  lay 
—  an  approximation  of  two  natures,  which  to  con- 
ceive, it  must  be  seen ;  analogous  to,  not  the  same 
with,  the  delicacies  of  Ovidian  transformations. 

To  the  lowest  subjects,  and,  to  a  superficial  com- 
prehension, the  most  barren,  the  Great  Masters  gave 
loftiness  and  fruitfulness.  The  large  eye  of  genius 
saw  in  the  meanness  of  present  objects  their  capa- 
bilities of  treatment  from  their  relations  to  some  grand 
Past  or  Future.  How  has  Raphael  —  we  must  still 
linger  about  the  Vatican  —  treated  the  humble  craft 
of  the  ship-builder,  in  his  "Building  of  the  Ark?" 
It  is  in  that  scriptural  series,  to  which  we  have  re- 
1 1 


1 62     ON  THE  PRODUCTIONS  OF  MODERN  ART. 

ferred,  and  which,  judging  from  some  fine  rough  old 
graphic  sketches  of  them  which  we  possess,  seem  to 
be  of  a  higher  and  more  poetic  grade  than  even  the 
Cartoons.  The  dim  of  sight  are  the  timid  and  the 
shrinking.  There  is  a  cowardice  in  modern  art.  As 
the  Frenchmen,  of  whom  Coleridge's  friend  made 
the  prophetic  guess  at  Rome,  from  the  beard  and 
horns  of  the  Moses  of  Michael  Angelo  collected  no 
inferences  beyond  that  of  a  He  Goat  and  a  Cornuto ; 
so  from  this  subject,  of  mere  mechanic  promise,  it 
would  instinctively  turn  away,  as  from  one  incapable 
of  investiture  with  any  grandeur.  The  dock-yards  at 
Woolwich  would  object  derogatory  associations.  The 
depot  at  Chatham  would  be  the  mote  and  the  beam 
in  its  intellectual  eye.  But  not  to  the  nautical  prep- 
arations in  the  ship-yards  of  Civita  Vecchia  did 
Raphael  look  for  instructions,  when  he  imagined  the 
Building  of  the  Vessel  that  was  to  be  conservatory  of 
the  wrecks  of  the  species  of  drowned  mankind.  In 
the  intensity  of  the  action,  he  keeps  ever  out  of  sight 
the  meanness  of  the  operation.  There  is  the  Patri- 
arch, in  calm  forethought,  and  with  holy  prescience, 
giving  directions.  And  there  are  his  agents  —  the 
solitary  but  sufficient  Three  —  hewing,  sawing,  every 
one  with  the  might  and  earnestness  of  a  Demiurgus ; 
under  some  instinctive  rather  than  technical  guidance ; 
giant- muscled ;  every  one  a  Hercules,  or  liker  to 
those   Vulcanian   Three,    that    in   sounding    caverns 


ON  THE  PRODUCTIONS  OF  MODERN  ART.  163 

under  Mongibello  wrought  in  fire  —  Brontes,  and 
black  Steropes,  and  Pyracmon.  So  work  the  work- 
men that  should  repair  a  world  ! 

Artists  again  err  in  the  confounding  of  poetic  with 
pictorial  subjects.  In  the  latter,  the  exterior  accidents 
are  nearly  everything,  the  unseen  qualities  as  nothing. 
Othello's  colour  —  the  infirmities  and  corpulence  of  a 
Sir  John  Falstaff — do  they  haunt  us  perpetually  in 
the  reading?  or  are  they  obtruded  upon  our  concep- 
tions one  time  for  ninety-nine  that  we  are  lost  in 
admiration  at  the  respective  moral  or  intellectual 
attributes  of  the  character  ?  But  in  a  picture  Othello 
is  always  a  Blackamoor ;  and  the  other  only  Plump 
Jack.  Deeply  corporealised,  and  enchained  hope- 
lessly in  the  grovelling  fetters  of  externality,  must  be 
the  mind,  to  which,  in  its  better  moments,  the  image 
of  the  high-souled,  high-intelligenced  Quixote  —  the 
errant  Star  of  Knighthood,  made  more  tender  by 
eclipse  —  has  never  presented  itself,  divested  from 
the  unhallowed  accompaniment  of  a  Sancho,  or  a 
rubblement  at  the  heels  of  Rosinante.  That  man  has 
read  his  book  by  halves ;  he  has  laughed,  mistaking 
his  author's  purport,  which  was  —  tears.  The  artist 
that  pictures  Quixote  (and  it  is  in  this  degrading 
point  that  he  is  every  season  held  up  at  our  Exhibi- 
tions) in  the  shallow  hope  of  exciting  mirth,  would 
have  joined  the  rabble  at  the  heels  of  his  starved 
steed.     We  wish  not  to  see  that  counterfeited,  which 


l64    ON  THE  PRODUCTIONS  OF  MODERN  ART. 

we  would  not  have  wished  to  see  in  the  reaUty.  Con- 
scious of  the  heroic  inside  of  the  noble  Quixote,  who, 
on  hearing  that  his  withered  person  was  passing, 
would  have  stepped  over  his  threshold  to  gaze  upon 
his  forlorn  habiliments,  and  the  "  strange  bed-fellows 
which  misery  brings  a  man  acquainted  with?  "  Shade 
of  Cervantes  !  who  in  thy  Second  Part  could  put  into 
the  mouth  of  thy  Quixote  those  high  aspirations  of 
a  super-chivalrous  gallantry,  where  he  replies  to  one 
of  the  shepherdesses,  apprehensive  that  he  would 
spoil  their  pretty  net-works,  and  inviting  him  to  be 
a  guest  with  them,  in  accents  like  these  :  "  Truly, 
fairest  Lady,  Actaeon  was  not  more  astonished  when 
he  saw  Diana  bathing  herself  at  the  fountain,  than  I 
have  been  in  beholding  your  beauty :  I  commend  the 
manner  of  your  pastime,  and  thank  you  for  your  kind 
offers ;  and,  if  I  may  serve  you,  so  I  may  be  sure  you 
will  be  obeyed,  you  may  command  me  :  for  my  pro- 
fession is  this.  To  shew  myself  thankful,  and  a  doer 
of  good  to  all  sorts  of  people,  especially  of  the  rank 
that  your  person  shows  you  to  be ;  and  if  those  nets, 
as  they  take  up  but  a  little  piece  of  ground,  should 
take  up  the  whole  world,  I  would  seek  out  new  worlds 
to  pass  through,  rather  than  break  them :  and  (he 
adds,)  that  you  may  give  credit  to  this  my  exaggera- 
tion, behold  at  least  he  that  promiseth  you  this,  is 
Don  Quixote  de  la  Mancha,  if  haply  this  name  hath 
come  to  your  hearing."     Illustrious  Romancer  !  were 


ON  THE  PRODUCTIONS  OF  MODERN  ART.  165 

the  "  fine  frenzies,"  which  possessed  the  brain  of  thy 
own  Quixote,  a  fit  subject,  as  in  this  Second  Part,  to 
be  exposed  to  the  jeers  of  Duennas  and  Serving  ]\Ien? 
to  be  monstered,  and  shown  up  at  the  heartless  ban- 
quets of  great  men?  Was  that  pitiable  infirmity, 
which  in  thy  First  Part  misleads  him,  always  from 
within,  into  half-ludicrous,  but  more  than  half-com- 
passionable  and  admirable  errors,  not  infliction  enough 
from  heaven,  that  men  by  studied  artifices  must  devise 
and  practise  upon  the  humour,  to  inflame  where  they 
should  soothe  it?  Why,  Goneril  would  have  blushed 
to  practise  upon  the  abdicated  king  at  this  rate,  and 
the  she-wolf  Regan  not  have  endured  to  play  the 
pranks  upon  his  fled  wits,  which  thou  hast  made  thy 
Quixote  suffer  in  Duchesses'  halls,  and  at  the  hands 
of  that  unworthy  nobleman.* 

In  the  First  Adventures,  even,  it  needed  all  the  art 
of  the  most  consummate  artist  in  the  Book  way  that 
the  world  hath  yet  seen,  to  keep  up  in  the  mind  of 
the  reader  the  heroic  attributes  of  the  character  with- 
out relaxing;  so  as  absolutely  that  they  shall  suffer 
no  alloy  from  the  debasing  fellowship  of  the  clown. 
If  it  ever  obtrudes  itself  as  a  disharmony,  are  we 
inclined  to  laugh ;  or  not,  rather,  to  indulge  a  con- 
trary emotion  ?  —  Cervantes,  stung,  perchance,  by  the 
relish  with  which  his  Reading  Public   had  received 

*  Yet  from  this  Second  Part,  our  cried-up  pictures  are 
mostly  selected ;  the  waiting-women  with  beards,  &c. 


1 66  ON  THE  PRODUCTIONS  OF  MODERN  ART. 

the  fooleries  of  the  man,  more  to  their  palates  than 
the  generosities  of  the  master,  in  the  sequel  let  his  pen 
run  riot,  lost  the  harmony  and  the  balance,  and  sacri- 
ficed a  great  idea  to  the  taste  of  his  contemporaries. 
We  know  that  in  the  present  day  the  Knight  has 
fewer  admirers  than  the  Squire.  Anticipating,  what 
did  actually  happen  to  him  —  as  afterwards  it  did  to 
his  scarce  inferior  follower,  the  Author  of  "  Guzman 
de  Alfarache  "  — that  some  less  knowing  hand  would 
prevent  him  by  a  spurious  Second  Part :  and  judging, 
that  it  would  be  easier  for  his  competitor  to  out-bid 
him  in  the  comicalities,  than  in  the  rofnance^  of  his 
work,  he  abandoned  his  Knight,  and  has  fairly  set 
up  the  Squire  for  his  Hero.  For  what  else  has  he 
unsealed  the  eyes  of  Sancho;  and  instead  of  that 
twilight  state  of  semi -insanity  —  the  madness  at 
second-hand  —  the  contagion,  caught  from  a  stronger 
mind  infected  —  that  war  between  native  cunning, 
and  hereditary  deference,  with  which  he  has  hitherto 
accompanied  his  master  —  two  for  a  pair  almost  — 
does  he  substitute  a  downright  Knave,  with  open 
eyes,  for  his  own  ends  only  following  a  confessed 
Madman;  and  offering  at  one  time  to  lay,  if  not 
actually  laying,  hands  upon  him  !  From  the  moment 
that  Sancho  loses  his  reverence,  Don  Quixote  is  be- 
come a  —  treatable  lunatic.  Our  artists  handle  him 
accordingly. 


REJOICINGS  UPON   THE   NEW   YEAR'S 
COMING   OF   AGE. 


The  Old  Year  being  dead,  and  the  New  Year 
coming  of  age,  which  he  does,  by  Calendar  Law,  as 
soon  as  the  breath  is  out  of  the  old  gentleman's  body, 
nothing  would  serve  the  young  spark  but  he  must 
give  a  dinner  upon  the  occasion,  to  which  all  the 
Days  in  the  year  were  invited.  The  Festivals^  whom 
he  deputed  as  his  stewards,  were  mightily  taken  with 
the  notion.  They  had  been  engaged  time  out  of 
mind,  they  said,  in  providing  mirth  and  good  cheer 
for  mortals  below ;  and  it  was  time  they  should  have 
a  taste  of  their  own  bounty.  It  was  stiffly  debated 
among  them,  whether  the  Fasts  should  be  admitted. 
Some  said,  the  appearance  of  such  lean,  starved 
guests,  with  their  mortified  faces,  would  pervert  the 
ends  of  the  meeting.  But  the  objection  was  over- 
ruled by  Christmas  Day,  who  had  a  design  upon  Ash 
Wednesday  (as  you  shall  hear),  and  a  mighty  desire 
to  see  how  the  old  Dominie  would  behave  himself  in 


1 68  REJOICINGS   UPON 

his  cups.  Only  the  Vigils  were  requested  to  come 
with  their  lanterns,  to  light  the  gentlefolks  home  at 
night. 

All  the  Days  came  to  their  day.  Covers  were  pro- 
vided for  three  hundred  and  sixty- five  guests  at  the 
principal  table ;  with  an  occasional  knife  and  fork  at 
the  side-board  for  the  Twenty- Nirith  of  February. 

I  should  have  told  you,  that  cards  of  invitation  had 
been  issued.  The  carriers  were  the  Hours  ;  twelve 
little,  merry,  whirligig  foot-pages,  as  you  should  desire 
to  see,  that  went  all  round,  and  found  out  the  persons 
invited  well  enough,  with  the  exception  of  Easter 
Day,  Shrove  Tuesday,  and  a  few  such  Moveables  who 
had  lately  shifted  their  quarters. 

Well,  they  all  met  at  last,  foul  Days,  fine  Days,  all 
sorts  of  Days,  and  a  rare  din  they  made  of  it.  There 
was  nothing  but,  Hail !  fellow  Day,  —  well  met  — 
brother  Day  —  sister  Day,  —  only  Lady  Day  kept  a 
little  on  the  aloof,  and  seemed  somewhat  scornful. 
Yet  some  said  Twelfth  Day  cut  her  out  and  out,  for 
she  came  in  a  tiffany  suit,  white  and  gold,  like  a 
queen  on  a  frost-cake,  all  royal,  glittering,  and  Epi- 
phanous.  The  rest  came,  some  in  green,  some  in 
white  —  but  old  Lent  and  his  fa77iily  were  not  yet 
out  of  mourning.  Rainy  Days  came  in,  dripping; 
and  sun-shiny  Days  helped  them  to  change  their 
stockings.  Wedding  Day  was  there  in  his  marriage 
finery,  a  little  the  worse  for  wear.     Pay  Day  came 


THE  NEW  YEAR'S  COMING  OF  AGE.   169 

late,  as   he  always  does ;  and  Doomsday  sent  word  — 
he  might  be  expected. 

April  Fool  (as  my  young  lord's  jester)  took  upon 
himself  to  marshal  the  guests,  and  wild  work  he  made 
with  it.  It  would  have  posed  old  Erra  Pater  to  have 
found  out  any  given  Day  in  the  year,  to  erect  a 
scheme  upon  —  good  Days,  bad  Days,  were  so 
shuffled  together,  to  the  confounding  of  all  sober 
horoscopy. 

He  had  stuck  the  Twenty  First  of  June  next  to 
the  Twenty  Second  of  December,  and  the  former 
"^looked  like  a  Maypole  siding  a  marrow-bone.  Ash 
Wednesday  got  wedged  in  (as  was  concerted)  be- 
twixt Christmas  and  Lord  Mayor's  Days.  Lord  ! 
how  he  laid  about  him  !  Nothing  but  barons  of  beef 
and  turkeys  would  go  down  with  him  —  to  the  great 
greasing  and  detriment  of  his  new  sackcloth  bib  and 
tucker.  And  still  Christinas  Z^^jj'was  at  his  elbow, 
plying  him  with  the  wassail-bowl,  till  he  roared,  and 
hiccup'd,  and  protested  there  was  no  faith  in  dried 
ling,  but  commended  it  to  the  devil  for  a  sour,  windy, 
acrimonious,  censorious,  hy-po-crit-crit-critical  mess, 
and  no  dish  for  a  gentleman.  Then  he  dipt  his  fist 
into  the  middle  of  the  great  custard  that  stood  before 
his  left-hand  neighbour,  and  daubed  his  hungry  beard 
all  over  with  it,  till  you  would  have  taken  him  for  the 
Last  Day  in  December,  it  so  hung  in  icicles. 

At  another  part  of  the  table.  Shrove  Tuesday  was 


170  REJOICINGS   UPON 

helping  the  Second  of  September  to  some  cock  broth, 
—  which  courtesy  the  latter  returned  with  the  deli- 
cate thigh  of  a  hen  pheasant  —  so  there  was  no  love 
lost  for  that  matter.  The  Last  of  Lent  was  spunging 
upon  Shrovetide's  pancakes ;  which  April  Fool  per- 
ceiving, told  him  he  did  well,  for  pancakes  were 
proper  to  a  good  fry-day. 

In  another  part,  a  hubbub  arose  about  the  Thirtieth 
offanuary,  who,  it  seems,  being  a  sour  puritanic  char- 
acter, that  thought  nobody's  meat  good  or  sanctified 
enough  for  him,  had  smuggled  into  the  room  a  calf  s 
head,  which  he  had  had  cooked  at  home  for  that  pur- 
pose, thinking  to  feast  thereon  incontinently ;  but  as 
it  lay  in  the  dish,  March  manyweathers,  who  is  a  very 
fine  lady,  and  subject  to  the  megrims,  screamed  out 
there. was  a  "human  head  in  the  platter,"  and  raved 
about  Herodias'  daughter  to  that  degree,  that  the 
obnoxious  viand  was  obliged  to  be  removed  ;  nor  did 
she  recover  her  stomach  till  she  had  gulped  down  a 
Restorative  J  confected  of  Oak  Apple^  which  the  merry 
Twenty  Ninth  of  May  always  carries  about  with  him 
for  that  purpose. 

The  King's  health  *  being  called  for  after  this,  a 
notable  dispute  arose  between  the  Twelfth  of  August 
(a  zealous  old  Whig  gentlewoman,)  and  the  Twe?tty 
Third  of  April  (a  new-fangled  lady  of  the  Tory 
stamp,)  as  to  which  of  them  should  have  the  honour 

*  The  late  King. 


THE   NEW    YEAR'S   COMING   OF   AGE.      171 

to  propose  it.  August  grew  hot  upon  the  matter, 
affirming  time  out  of  mind  the  prescriptive  right  to 
have  lain  with  her,  till  her  rival  had  basely  sup- 
planted her;  whom  she  represented  as  little  better 
than  a  kept  mistress,  who  went  about  mfine  clothes, 
while  she  (the  legitimate  Birthday)  had  scarcely  a 
rag,  &c. 

Ap7-il  Fool,  being  made  mediator,  confirmed  the 
right  in  the  strongest  form  of  words  to  the  appellant, 
but  decided  for  peace'  sake  that  the  exercise  of  it 
should  remain  with  the  present  possessor.  At  the 
same  time,  he  slyly  rounded  the  first  lady  in  the  ear, 
that  an  action  might  lie  against  the  Crown  for  bi-geny. 

It  beginning  to  grow  a  little  duskish.  Candlemas 
lustily  bawled  out  for  lights,  which  was  opposed  by 
all  the  Days,  who  protested  against  burning  daylight. 
Then  fair  water  was  handed  round  in  silver  ewers, 
and  the  same  lady  was  observed  to  take  an  unusual 
time  in    Washing  herself. 

Afay  Dayjwi\h.  that  sweetness  which  is  peculiar  to 
her/  in  a  neat  speech  proposing  the  health  of  the 
founder,  crowned  her  ^'^oblet  (and^  by/her  example 
the  rest  of  the  company)  Vith  garlands.  This  being 
done,  the  lordly  Akw  Year  from  the  upper  end  of  the 
table,  in  a  cordial  but  somewhat  lofty  tone,  returned 
thanks.  He  felt  proud  on  an  occasion  of  meeting 
so  many  of  his  worthy  father's  late  tenants,  promised 
to   improve  their  farms,  and    at    the   same   time   to 


172  REJOICINGS   UPON 

abate  (if  anything  was  found  unreasonable)  in  their 
rents. 

At  the  mention  of  this,  the  four  Quarter  Days 
involuntarily  looked  at  each  other,  and  smiled ; 
April  Fool  whistled  to  an  old  tune  of  "  New  Brooms ;  " 
and  a  surly  old  rebel  at  the  farther  end  of  the  table 
(who  was  discovered  to  be  no  other  than  the  Fifth 
of  November,)  muttered  out,  distinctly  enough  to 
be  heard  by  the  whole  company,  words  to  this  effect, 
that,  "when  the  old  one  is  gone,  he  is  a  fool  that 
looks  for  a  better."  Which  rudeness  of  his,  the 
guests  resenting,  unanimously  voted  his  expulsion ; 
and  the  male-content  was  thrust  out  neck  and  heels 
into  the  cellar,  as  the  properest  place  for  such  a 
boutefeu  and  firebrand  as  he  had  shown  himself 
to  be. 

Order  being  restored  —  the  young  lord  (who  to 
say  truth,  had  been  a  little  ruffled,  and  put  beside 
his  oratory)  in  as  few,  and  yet  as  obliging  words  as 
possible,  assured  them  of  entire  welcome ;  and,  with 
a  graceful  turn,  singling  out  poor  Twenty  ninth  of 
February,  that  had  sate  all  this  while  mum-chance 
at  the  side-board,  begged  to  couple  his  health  with 
that  of  the  good  company  before  him  —  which  he 
drank  accordingly;  observing,  that  he  had  not  seen 
his  honest  face  any  time  these  four  years,  with  a 
number  of  endearing  expressions  besides.  At  the 
same  time,  removing  the  solitary  Day  from  the  for- 


THE  NEW  YEAR'S  COMING  OF  AGE.   173 

lorn  seat  which  had  been  assigned  him,  he  stationed 
him  at  his  own  board,  somewhere  between  the  Greek 
Calends  and  Latter  Lam?nas. 

Ash  IVedfiesdayj  being  now  called  upon  for  a  song, 
with  his  eyes  fast  stuck  in  his  head,  and  as  well  as 
the  Canary  he  had  swallowed  would  give  him  leave, 
struck  up  a  Carol  which  Christmas  Day  had  taught 
him  for  the  nonce ;  and  was  followed  by  the  latter, 
who  gave  "Miserere"  in  fine  style,  hitting  off  the 
mumping  notes  and  lengthened  drawl  of  Old  Morti- 
fication with  infinite  humour.  April  Fool  swore  they 
had  exchanged  conditions :  but  Good  Friday  was 
observed  to  look  extremely  grave ;  and  Sunday  held 
her  fan  before  her  face,  that  she  might  not  be  seen 
to  smile. 

Shrove-tide,  Lord  Mayor's  Day,  and  April  Fool, 
next  joined  in  a  glee  — 

Which  is  the  properest  day  to  drink.!* 

in  which  all  the   Days  chiming  in,  made   a   merry 
burden. 

They  next  fell  to  quibbles  and  conundrums.  The 
question  being  proposed,  who  had  the  greatest 
number  of  followers  —  the  Quarter  Days  said,  there 
could  be  no  question  as  to  that;  for  they  had  all 
the  creditors  in  the  world  dogging  their  heels.  But 
April  Fool  gave  it  in  favour  of  the  Forty  Days  before 
Easter;   because   the   debtors  in  all  cases  outnum- 


1/4  REJOICINGS   UPON 

bered  the  creditors,  and  they  kept  lent  all  the 
year. 

All  this  while,  Valentine's  Day  kept  courting  pretty 
May^  who  sate  next  him,  slipping  amorous  billets- 
doux  under  the  table,  till  the  Dog  Days  (who  are 
naturally  of  a  warm  constitution)  began  to  be  jealous, 
and  to  bark  and  rage  exceedingly.  April  Fool,  who 
likes  a  bit  of  sport  above  measure,  and  had  some 
pretensions  to  the  lady  besides,  as  being  but  a 
cousin  once  removed,  —  clapped  and  halloo'd  them 
on ;  and  as  fast  as  their  indignation  cooled,  those 
mad  wags,  the  Ember  Days,  were  at  it  with  their 
bellows,  to  blow  it  into  a  flame ;  and  all  was  in  a 
ferment :  till  old  Madam  Septuagesima  (who  boasts 
herself  the  Mother  of  the  Days)  wisely  diverted  the 
conversation  with  a  tedious  tale  of  the  lovers  which 
she  could  reckon  when  she  was  young ;  and  of  one 
Master  Rogation  Day  in  particular,  who  was  for  ever 
putting  the  question  to  her;  but  she  kept  him  at 
a  distance,  as  the  chronicle  would  tell  —  by  which 
I  apprehend  she  meant  the  Almanack.  Then  she 
rambled  on  to  the  Days  that  were  gone,  the  good  old 
Days,  and  so  to  the  Days  before  the  Flood  —  which 
plainly  showed  her  old  head  to  be  Httle  better  than 
crazed  and  doited. 

Day  being  ended,  the  Days  called  for  their  cloaks 
and  great  coats,  and  took  their  leaves.  Lord  Mayor's 
Day  went  off  in  a  Mist,  as  usual ;    Shortest  Day  in  a 


THE   NEW   YEAR'S   COMING   OF   AGE.      175 

deep  black  Fog,  that  wrapt  the  Uttle  gentleman  all 
round  like  a  hedge-hog.  Two  Vigils  —  so  watchmen 
are  called  in  heaven  —  saw  Christmas  Day  safe 
home  —  they  had  been  used  to  the  business  before. 
Another  Vigil —  a  stout,  sturdy  patrole,  called  the 
Eve  of  St.  Christopher  —  seeing  Ash  Wednesday  in 
a  condition  little  better  than  he  should  be  —  e'en 
whipt  him  over  his  shoulders,  pick-a-back  fashion, 
and  Old  Mortification  went  floating  home,  singing  — 

On  the  bat's  back  do  I  fly, 

and  a  number  of  old  snatches  besides,  between  drunk 
and  sober,  but  very  few  Aves  or  Penitentiaries  (you 
may  believe  me)  were  among  them.  Longest  Day 
set  off  westward  in  beautiful  crimson  and  gold  — 
the  rest,  some  in  one  fashion,  some  in  another ;  but 
Valentine  and  pretty  May  took  their  departure  to- 
gether in  one  of  the  prettiest  silvery  twihghts  a 
Lover's  Day  could  wish  to  set  in. 


THE  WEDDING. 


I  DO  not  know  when  I  have  been  better  pleased  than 
at  being  invited  last  week  to  be  present  at  the  wed- 
ding of  a  friend's  daughter.  I  like  to  make  one  at 
these  ceremonies,  which  to  us  old  people  give  back 
our  youth  in  a  manner,  and  restore  our  gayest  sea- 
son, in  the  remembrance  of  our  own  success,  or  the 
regrets,  scarcely  less  tender,  of  our  own  youthful  dis- 
appointments, in  this  point  of  a  settlement.  On 
these  occasions  I  am  sure  to  be  in  good-humour  for 
a  week  or  two  after,  and  enjoy  a  reflected  honey- 
moon. Being  without  a  family,  I  am  flattered  with 
these  temporary  adoptions  into  a  friend's  family;  I 
feel  a  sort  of  cousinhood,  or  uncleship,  for  the  sea- 
son ;  I  am  inducted  into  degrees  of  affinity ;  and, 
in  the  participated  socialities  of  the  little  community, 
I  lay  down  for  a  brief  while  my  solitary  bachelor- 
ship.  I  carry  this  humour  so  far,  that  I  take  it  un- 
kindly to  be  left  out,  even  when  a  funeral  is  going 
on  in  the  house  cf  a  dear  friend.  But  to  my 
subject. 


THE   WEDDING.  177 

The  union  itself  had  been  long  settled,  but  its 
celebration  had  been  hitherto  deferred,  to  an  almost 
unreasonable  state  of  suspense  in  the  lovers,  by  some 
invincible  prejudices  which  the  bride's  father  had 
unhappily  contracted  upon  the  subject  of  the  too 
early  marriages  of  females.  He  has  been  lecturing 
any  time  these  five  years  —  for  to  that  length  the 
courtship  has  been  protracted  —  upon  the  propriety 
of  putting  off  the  solemnity,  till  the  lady  should  have 
completed  her  five  and  twentieth  year.  We  all  be- 
gan to  be  afraid  that  a  suit,  which  as  yet  had  abated 
of  none  of  its  ardours,  might  at  last  be  lingered  on, 
till  passion  had  time  to  cool,  and  love  go  out  in  the 
experiment.  But  a  little  wheedling  on  the  part  of 
his  wife,  who  was  by  no  means  a  party  to  these  over- 
strained notions,  joined  to  some  serious  expostula- 
tions on  that  of  his  friends,  who,  from  the  growing 
infirmities  of  the  old  gentleman,  could  not  promise 
ourselves  many  years'  enjoyment  of  his  company, 
and  were  anxious  to  bring  matters  to  a  conclusion 
during  his  life-time,  at  length  prevailed;  and  on 
Monday  last  the  daughter  of  my  old  friend.  Admiral 
having  attained  the  womanly  age  of  nine- 
teen, was  conducted  to  the  church  by  her  pleasant 
cousin  J ,  who  told  some  few  years  older. 

Before  the  youthful  part  of  my  female  readers 
express  their  indignation  at  the  abominable  loss  of 
time  occasioned  to  the  lovers  by  the   preposterous 


l/S  THE  WEDDING. 

notions  of  my  old  friend,  they  will  do  well  to  con- 
sider the  reluctance  which  a  fond  parent  naturally 
feels  at  parting  with  his  child.  To  this  unwillingness, 
I  believe,  in  most  cases  may  be  traced  the  difference 
of  opinion  on  this  point  between  child  and  parent, 
whatever  pretences  of  interest  or  prudence  may  be 
held  out  to  cover  it.  The  hardheartedness  of  fathers 
is  a  fine  theme  for  romance  writers,  a  sure  and  mov- 
ing topic ;  but  is  there  not  something  untender,  to 
say  no  more  of  it,  in  the  hurry  which  a  beloved  child 
is  sometimes  in  to  tear  herself  from  the  parental 
stock,  and  commit  herself  to  strange  graftings?  The 
case  is  heightened  where  the  lady,  as  in  the  present 
instance,  happens  to  be  an  only  child.  I  do  not 
understand  these  matters  experimentally,  but  I  can 
make  a  shrewd  guess  at  the  wounded  pride  of  a 
parent  upon  these  occasions.  It  is  no  new  ob- 
servation, I  believe,  that  a  lover  in  most  cases  has 
no  rival  so  much  to  be  feared  as  the  father.  Cer- 
tainly there  is  a  jealousy  in  unparallel  subjects^  which 
is  little  less  heart-rending  than  the  passion  which 
we  more  strictly  christen  by  that  name.  Mothers' 
scruples  are  more  easily  got  over ;  for  this  reason,  I 
suppose,  that  the  protection  transferred  to  a  hus- 
band is  less  a  derogation  and  a  loss  to  their  au- 
thority than  to  the  paternal.  Mothers,  besides, 
have  a  trembling  foresight,  which  paints  the  incon- 
veniences  (impossible  to  be  conceived  in  the  same 


THE   WEDDING.  1 79 

degree  by  the  other  parent)  of  a  Hfe  of  forlorn 
ceUbacy,  which  the  refusal  of  a  tolerable  match  may 
entail  upon  their  child.  Mothers'  instinct  is  a  surer 
guide  here,  than  the  cold  reasonings  of  a  father  on 
such  a  topic.  To  this  instinct  may  be  imputed,  and 
by  it  alone  may  be  excused,  the  unbeseeming  arti- 
fices, by  which  some  wives  push  on  the  matrimonial 
projects  of  their  daughters,  which  the  husband,  how- 
ever approving,  shall  entertain  with  comparative  in- 
difference. A  little  shamelessness  on  this  head  is 
pardonable.  With  this  explanation,  forwardness  be- 
comes a  grace,  and  maternal  importunity  receives 
the  name  of  a  virtue.  —  But  the  parson  stays,  while 
I  preposterously  assume  his  office ;  I  am  preaching, 
while  the  bride  is  on  the  threshold. 

Nor  let  any  of  my  female  readers  suppose  that  the 
sage  reflections  which  have  just  escaped  me  have  the 
obliquest  tendency  of  application  to  the  young  lady, 
who,  it  will  be  seen,  is  about  to  venture  upon  a 
change  in  her  condition,  at  a  mature  and  competent 
age,  and  not  without  the  fullest  approbation  of  all 
parties.     I  only  deprecate  very  hasty  marriages. 

It  had  been  fixed  that  the  ceremony  should  be 
gone  through  at  an  early  hour,  to  give  time  for  a 
little  dejeune  afterwards,  to  which  a  select  party  of 
friends  had  been  invited.  We  were  in  church  a  little 
before  the  clock  struck  eight. 

Nothing  could  be  more  judicious  or  graceful  than 


l8o  THE   WEDDING. 

the  dress  of  the  bride-maids  —  the  three  charming 
Miss  Foresters  —  on  this  morning.  To  give  the 
bride  an  opportunity  of  shining  singly,  they  had 
come  habited  all  in  green.  I  am  ill  at  describing 
female  apparel ;  but,  while  she  stood  at  the  altar  in 
vestments  white  and  candid  as  her  thoughts,  a  sacri- 
ficial whiteness,  they  assisted  in  robes,  such  as  might 
become  Diana's  nymphs  —  Foresters  indeed  —  as 
such  who  had  not  yet  come  to  the  resolution  of 
putting  off  cold  virginity.  These  young  maids,  not 
being  so  blest  as  to  have  a  mother  living,  I  am  told, 
keep  single  for  their  father's  sake,  and  live  all  to- 
gether so  happy  with  their  remaining  parent,  that 
the  hearts  of  their  lovers  are  ever  broken  with  the 
prospect  (so  inauspicious  to  their  hopes)  of  such 
uninterrupted  and  provoking  home-comfort.  Gal- 
lant girls  !  each  a  victim  worthy  of  Iphigenia  ! 

I  do  not  know  what  business  I  have  to  be  present 
in  solemn  places.  I  cannot  divest  me  of  an  unsea- 
sonable disposition  to  levity  upon  the  most  awful 
occasions.  I  was  never  cut  out  for  a  pubHc  func- 
tionary. Ceremony  and  I  have  long  shaken  hands ; 
but  I  could  not  resist  the  importunities  of  the  young 
lady's  father,  whose  gout  unhappily  confined  him 
at  home,  to  act  as  parent  on  this  occasion,  and  give 
away  the  bride.  Something  ludicrous  occurred  to 
me  at  this  most  serious  of  all  moments  —  a  sense  of 
my  unfitness  to  have  the  disposal,  even  in  imagina- 


THE   WEDDING.  l8l 

tion,  of  the  sweet  young  creature  beside  me.  I 
fear  I  was  betrayed  to  some  lightness,  for  the  awful 
eye  of  the  parson  —  and  the  rector's  eye  of  Saint 
Mildred's  in  the  Poultry  is  no  trifle  of  a  rebuke  — 
was  upon  me  in  an  instant,  souring  my  incipient 
jest  to  the  tristful  severities  of  a  funeral. 

This  was  the  only  misbehaviour  which  I  can  plead 
to  upon  this  solemn  occasion,  unless  what  was  ob- 
jected  to    me    after   the    ceremony   by   one   of  the 

handsome   Miss   T s,  be   accounted   a   solecism. 

She  was  pleased  to  say  that  she  had  never  seen  a 
gentleman  before  me  give  away  a  bride  in  black. 
Now  black  has  been  my  ordinary  apparel  so  long 
—  indeed  I  take  it  to  be  the  proper  costume  of  an 
author  —  the  stage  sanctions  it  —  that  to  have  ap- 
peared in  some  lighter  colour  would  have  raised 
more  mirth  at  my  expense,  than  the  anomaly  had 
created  censure.  But  I  could  perceive  that  the 
bride's  mother,  and  some  elderly  ladies  present  (God 
bless  them  !)  would  have  been  well  content,  if  I  had 
come  in  any  other  colour  than  that.  But  I  got  over 
the  omen  by  a  lucky  apologue,  which  I  remembered 
out  of  Pilpay,  or  some  Indian  author,  of  all  the  birds 
being  invited  to  the  linnets'  wedding,  at  which,  when 
all  the  rest  came  in  their  gayest  feathers,  the  raven 
alone  apologised  for  his  cloak  because  "  he  had  no 
other."  This  tolerably  reconciled  the  elders.  But 
with  the  young  people  all  was  merriment,  and  shak- 


l82  THE   WEDDING. 

ings  of  hands,  and  congratulations,  and  kissing  away 
the  bride's  tears,  and  kissings  from  her  in  return,  till 
a  young  lady,  who  assumed  some  experience  in  these 
matters,  having  worn  the  nuptial  bands  some  four  or 
five  weeks  longer  than  her  friend,  rescued  her,  archly 
observing,  with  half  an  eye  upon  the  bridegroom, 
that  at  this  rate  she  would  have  "none  left." 

My  friend  the  admiral  was  in  fine  wig  and  buckle 
on  this  occasion  —  a  striking  contrast  to  his  usual 
neglect  of  personal  appearance.  He  did  not  once 
shove  up  his  borrowed  locks  (his  custom  ever  at  his 
morning  studies)  to  betray  the  few  gray  stragglers 
of  his  own  beneath  them.  He  wore  an  aspect  of 
thoughtful  satisfaction.  I  trembled  for  the  hour, 
which  at  length  approached,  when  after  a  protracted 
breakfast  of  three  hours  —  if  stores  of  cold  fowls, 
tongues,  hams,  botargoes,  dried  fruits,  wines,  cor- 
dials, &c.,  can  deserve  so  meagre  an  appellation  — 
the  coach  was  announced,  which  was  come  to  carry 
oif  the  bride  and  bridegroom  for  a  season,  as  custom 
has  sensibly  ordained,  into  the  country ;  upon  which 
design,  wishing  them  a  felicitous  journey,  let  us  re- 
turn to  the  assembled  guests. 

As  when  a  well-graced  actor  leaves  the  stage. 

The  eyes  of  men 

Are  idly  bent  on  him  that  enters  next, 

so  idly  did  we  bend  our  eyes  upon  one  another, 
when  the  chief  performers  in  the  morning's  pageii-nt 


THE   WEDDING.  1 83 

had  vanished.  None  told  his  tale.  None  sipt  her 
glass.  The  poor  Admiral  made  an  effort  —  it  was 
not  much.  I  had  anticipated  so  far.  Even  the 
infinity  of  full  satisfaction,  that  had  betrayed  itself 
through  the  prim  looks  and  quiet  deportment  of  his 
lady,  began  to  wane  into  something  of  misgiving. 
No  one  knew  whether  to  take  their  leaves  or  stay. 
We  seemed  assembled  upon  a  silly  occasion.  In 
this  crisis,  betwixt  tarrying  and  departure,  I  must 
do  justice  to  a  foolish  talent  of  mine,  which  had 
otherwise  like  to  have  brought  me  into  disgrace  in 
the  fore-part  of  the  day;  I  mean  a  power,  in  any 
emergency,  of  thinking  and  giving  vent  to  all  manner 
of  strange  nonsense.  In  this  awkward  dilemma  I 
found  it  sovereign.  I  rattled  off  some  of  my  most 
excellent  absurdities.  All  were  willing  to  be  relieved, 
at  any  expense  of  reason,  from  the  pressure  of  the 
intolerable  vacuum  which  had  succeeded  to  the 
morning  bustle.  By  this  means  I  was  fortunate  in 
keeping  together  the  better  part  of  the  company  to 
a  late  hour :  and  a  rubber  of  whist  (the  Admiral's 
favourite  game)  with  some  rare  strokes  of  chance 
as  well  as  skill,  which  came  opportunely  on  his  side 
—  lengthened  out  till  midnight  —  dismissed  the  old 
gentleman  at  last  to  his  bed  with  comparatively  easy 
spirits. 

I  have  been  at  my  old  friend's  various  times  since. 
I  do  not  know  a  visiting  place  where   every  guest 


1 84  THE   WEDDING. 

is  SO  perfectly  at  his  ease ;  nowhere,  where  harmony 
is  so  strangely  the  result  of  confusion.     Every  body  is 
at  cross  purposes,    yet  the   effect  is  so  much  better 
than    uniformity.       Contradictory    orders;    servants 
pulling   one  way ;  master  and  mistress  driving  some 
other,  yet  both  diverse ;  visitors  huddled  up  in  cor- 
ners ;    chairs    unsymmetrised :     candles   disposed    by 
chance ;    meals    at    odd    hours,    tea    and    supper    at 
once,  or  the   latter  preceding  the  former;    the  host 
and  the  guest  conferring,  yet  each  upon  a  different 
topic,  each  understanding  himself,  neither  trying  to 
understand  or  hear  the  other ;   draughts  and  politics, 
chess  and  political  economy,  cards  and  conversation 
on  nautical   matters,  going  on  at   once,  without  the 
hope,  or  indeed   the   wish,    of   distinguishing    them, 
make  it  altogether  the  most  perfect  concordia  discors 
you  shall  meet   with.     Yet   somehow  the  old  house 
is  not  quite   what   it   should  be.     The   Admiral  still 
enjoys  his  pipe,  but  he  has  no  Miss  Emily  to  fill  it 
for  him.     The  instrument  stands  where  it  stood,  but 
she  is  gone,  whose   delicate   touch   could   sometimes 
for  a    short    minute    appease  the    warring   elements. 
He  has  learnt,  as  Marvel  expresses  it,  to  "  make  his 
destiny  his   choice."     He   bears  bravely  up,  but  he 
does  not   come  out   with    his   flashes  of  wild  wit  so 
thick  as   formerly.     His  sea  songs    seldomer  escape 
him.     His  wife,   too,   looks   as  if  she  wanted  some 
younger  body  to   scold   and  set  to   rights.     We  all 


THE   WEDDING.  185 

miss  a  junior  presence.  It  is  wonderful  how  one 
young  maiden  freshens  up,  and  keeps  green,  the 
paternal  roof.  Old  and  young  seem  to  have  an 
interest  in  her,  so  long  as  she  is  not  absolutely  dis- 
posed of.  The  youthfulness  of  the  house  is  flown. 
Emily  is  married. 


THE   CHILD   ANGEL. 


A   DREAM. 


I  CHANCED  upon  the  prettiest,  oddest,  fantastical 
thing  of  a  dream  the  other  night,  that  you  shall  hear 
of.  I  had  been  reading  the  "  Loves  of  the  Angels," 
and  went  to  bed  with  my  head  full  of  speculations, 
suggested  by  that  extraordinary  legend.  It  had 
given  birth  to  innumerable  conjectures ;  and,  I  re- 
member, the  last  waking  thought,  which  I  gave  ex- 
pression to  on  my  pillow,  was  a  sort  of  wonder, 
"what  could  come  of  it." 

I  was  suddenly  transported,  how  or  whither  I  could 
scarcely  make  out  — but  to  some  celestial  region. 
It  was  not  the  real  heavens  neither  —  not  the  down- 
right Bible  heaven  —  but  a  kind  of  fairyland  heaven, 
about  which  a  poor  human  fancy  may  have  leave  to 
sport  and  air  itself,  I  will  hope,  without  presumption. 

Methought  —  what  wild  things  dreams  are  !  —  I 
was  present  —  at  what  would  you  imagine  ?  —  at  an 
angel's  gossiping. 

Whence  it  came,  or  how  it  came,  or  who  bid  it 
come,  or  whether  it  came  purely  of  its  own  head, 


THE   CHILD    ANGEL.  1 8/ 

neither  you  nor  I  know  —  but  there  lay,  sure  enough, 
wrapt  in  its  little  cloudy  swaddling  bands  —  a  Child 
Angel. 

Sun -threads  —  filmy  beams  —  ran  through  the  ce- 
lestial napery  of  what  seemed  its  princely  cradle. 
All  the  winged  orders  hovered  round,  watching  when 
the  new-born  should  open  its  yet  closed  eyes ;  which, 
when  it  did,  first  one,  and  then  the  other  —  with  a 
solicitude  and  apprehension,  yet  not  such  as,  stained 
with  fear,  dims  the  expanding  eye -lids  of  mortal 
infants,  but  as  if  to  explore  its  path  in  those  its  un- 
hereditary  palaces  —  what  an  inextinguishable  titter 
that  time  spared  not  celestial  visages  !  Nor  wanted 
there  to  my  seeming  —  O  the  inexpUcable  simpleness 
of  dreams  !  —  bowls  of  that  cheering  nectar, 

—  which  mortals  caudle  call  below  — 

Nor  were  wanting  faces  of  female  ministrants,  — 
stricken  in  years,  as  it  might  seem,  —  so  dexterous 
were  those  heavenly  attendants  to  counterfeit  kindly 
similitudes  of  earth,  to  greet,  with  terrestrial  child- 
rites  the  young  present,  which  earth  had  made  to 
heaven. 

Then  were  celestial  harpings  heard,  not  in  full 
symphony  as  those  by  which  the  spheres  are  tu- 
tored ;  but,  as  loudest  instruments  on  earth  speak 
oftentimes,  muffled ;  so  to  accommodate  their  sound 
the  better  to  the  weak  ears  of   the  imperfect-born. 


1 88  THE  CHILD   ANGEL. 

And,  with  the  noise  of  those  subdued  soundings,  the 
Angelet  sprang  forth,  flutteriug  its  rudiments  of 
pinions  —  but  forthwith  flagged  and  was  recovered 
into  the  arms  of  those  full-winged  angels.  And  a 
wonder  it  was  to  see  how,  as  years  went  round  in 
heaven  —  a  year  in  dreams  is  as  a  day  —  continually 
its  white  shoulders  put  forth  buds  of  wings,  but, 
wanting  the  perfect  angelic  nutriment,  anon  was 
shorn  of  its  aspiring,  and  fell  fluttering  —  still  caught 
by  angel  hands  —  for  ever  to  put  forth  shoots,  and 
to  fall  fluttering,  because  its  birth  was  not  of  the 
unmixed  vigour  of  heaven. 

And  a  name  was  given  to  the  Babe  Angel,  and 
it  was  to  be  called  Ge- Urania,  because  its  produc- 
tion was  of  earth  and  heaven. 

And  it  could  not  taste  of  death,  by  reason  of  its 
adoption  into  immortal  palaces :  but  it  was  to  know 
weakness,  and  reliance,  and  the  shadow  of  human 
imbecility ;  and  it  went  with  a  lame  gait ;  but  in  its 
goings  it  exceeded  all  mortal  children  in  grace  and 
swiftness.  Then  pity  first  sprang  up  in  angelic 
bosoms;  and  yearnings  (like  the  human)  touched 
them  at  the  sight  of  the  immortal  lame  one. 

And  with  pain  did  then  first  those  Intuitive  Es- 
sences, with  pain  and  strife  to  their  natures  (not 
grief),  put  back  their  bright  intelligences,  and  re- 
duce their  ethereal  minds,  schooling  them  to  degrees 
and  slower  processes,  so  to  adapt  their  lessons  to 


THE   CHILD    ANGEL.  189 

the  gradual  illumination  (as  must  needs  be)  of  the 
half-earth-born ;  and  what  intuitive  notices  they 
could  not  repel  (by  reason  that  their  nature  is,  to 
know  all  things  at  once),  the  half-heavenly  novice, 
by  the  better  part  of  its  nature,  aspired  to  receive 
into  its  understanding;  so  that  Humility  and  Aspi- 
ration went  on  even-paced  in  the  instruction  of  the 
glorious  Amphibium. 

But,  by  reason  that  Mature  Humanity  is  too  gross 
to  breathe  the  air  of  that  super-subtile  region,  its 
portion  was,  and  is,  to  be  a  child  for  ever. 

And  because  the  human  part  of  it  might  not  press 
into  the  heart  and  inwards  of  the  palace  of  its  adop- 
tion, those  full-natured  angels  tended  it  by  turns  in 
the  purlieus  of  the  palace,  where  were  shady  groves 
and  rivulets,  like  this  green  earth  from  which  it 
came  :  so  Love,  with  Voluntary  Humility,  waited 
upon  the  entertainment  of  the  new-adopted. 

And  myriads  of  years  rolled  round  (in  dreams 
Time  is  nothing),  and  still  it  kept,  and  is  to  keep, 
perpetual  childhood,  and  is  the  Tutelar  Genius  of 
Childhood  upon  earth,  and  still  goes  lame  and 
lovely. 

By  the  banks  of  the  river  Pison  is  seen,  lone- 
sitting  by  the  grave  of  the  terrestrial  Adah,  whom 
the  angel  Nadir  loved,  a  Child ;  but  not  the  same 
which  I  saw  in  heaven.  A  mournful  hue  overcasts 
its   lineaments;    nevertheless,    a    correspondency    is 


190  THE  CHILD   ANGEL. 

between  the  child  by  the  grave,  and  that  celestial 
orphan,  whom  I  saw  above ;  and  the  dimness  of  the 
grief  upon  the  heavenly,  is  as  a  shadow  or  emblem 
of  that  which  stains  the  beauty  of  the  terrestrial. 
And  this  correspondency  is  not  to  be  understood 
but  by  dreams. 

And  in  the  archives  of  heaven  I  had  grace  to  read, 
how  that  once  the  angel  Nadir,  being  exiled  from  his 
place  for  mortal  passion,  upspringing  on  the  wings 
of  parental  love  (such  power  had  parental  love  for 
a  moment  to  suspend  the  else-irrevocable  law)  ap- 
peared for  a  brief  instant  in  his  station;  and,  de- 
positing a  wondrous  Birth,  straightway  disappeared, 
and  the  palaces  knew  him  no  more.  And  this 
charge  was  the  self- same  Babe,  who  goeth  lame  and 
lovely  —  but  Adah  sleepeth  by  the  river  Pison. 


A  DEATH-BED. 

IN   A   LETTER   TO    R.    H.    ESQ.    OF    B- 


I  CALLED  Upon  you  this  morning,  and  found  that 
you  were  gone  to  visit  a  dying  friend.  I  had  been 
upon  a  hke  errand.  Poor  N.  R.  has  lain  dying  now 
for  almost  a  week ;  such  is  the  penalty  we  pay  for 
having  enjoyed  through  life  a  strong  constitution. 
Whether  he  knew  me  or  not,  I  know  not,  or  whether 
he  saw  me  through  his  poor  glazed  eyes ;  but  the 
group  I  saw  about  him  I  shall  not  forget.  Upon 
the  bed,  or  about  it,  were  assembled  his  Wife,  their 
two  Daughters,  and  poor  deaf  Robert,  looking  doubly 
stupified.  There  they  were,  and  seemed  to  have 
been  sitting  all  the  week.  I  could  only  reach  out  a 
hand  to  Mrs.  R.  Speaking  was  impossible  in  that 
mute  chamber.  By  this  time  it  must  be  all  over 
with  him.  In  him  I  have  a  loss  the  world  cannot 
make  up.  He  was  my  friend,  and  my  father's  friend, 
for  all  the  life  that  I  can  remember.  I  seem  to 
have  made  foolish  friendships  since.  Those  are 
the  friendships,  which  outlast  a  second   generation. 


192  THE   DEATH-BED. 

Old  as  i  am  getting,  in  his  eyes  I  was  still  the  child 
he  knew  me.  To  the  last  he  called  me  Jemmy.  I 
have  none  to  call  me  Jemmy  now.  He  was  the  last 
link  that  bound  me  to  B .  You  are  but  of  yes- 
terday. In  him  I  seem  to  have  lost  the  old  plain- 
ness of  manners  and  singleness  of  heart.  Lettered 
he  was  not;  his  reading  scarcely  exceeded  the 
Obituary  of  the  old  Gentleman's  Magazine,  to  which 
he  has  never  failed  of  having  recourse  for  these  last 
fifty  years.  Yet  there  was  the  pride  of  literature 
about  him  from  that  slender  perusal ;  and  moreover 
from  his  office  of  archive-keeper  to  your  ancient 
city,  in  which  he  must  needs  pick  up  some  equivocal 
Latin;  which,  among  his  less  literary  friends,  as- 
sumed the  air  of  a  very  pleasant  pedantry.  Can  I 
forget  the  erudite  look  with  which,  having  tried  to 
puzzle  out  the  text  of  a  Black  lettered  Chaucer  in 
your  Corporation  Library,  to  which  he  was  a  sort  of 
Librarian,  he  gave  it  up  with  this  consolatory  re- 
flection—  "Jemmy,"  said  he  "I  do  not  know  what 
you  find  in  these  very  old  books,  but  I  observe, 
there  is  a  deal  of  very  indifferent  spelling  in  them." 
His  jokes  (for  he  had  some)  are  ended ;  but  they 
were  old  Perennials,  staple,  and  always  as  good  as 
new.  He  had  one  Song,  that  spake  of  the  "  flat 
bottoms  of  our  foes  coming  over  in  darkness,"  and 
alluded  to  a  threatened  Invasion,  many  years  since 
blown  over ;  this  he  reserved  to  be  sung  on  Christ- 


THE  DEATH-BED.  193 

mas  Night,  which  we  always  passed  with  him,  and 
he  sang  it  with  the  freshness  of  an  impending  event. 
How  his  eyes  would  sparkle  when  he  came  to  the 
passage  :  — 

We  '11  still  make  'em  run,  and  we  '11  still  make  *em  sweat, 
In  spite  of  the  devil  and  Brussels'  Gazette ! 

What  is  the  Brussels'  Gazette  now?  I  cry,  while  I 
endite  these  trifles.  His  poor  girls  who  are,  I  be- 
lieve, compact  of  solid  goodness,  will  have  to  receive 
their  afflicted  mother  at  an  unsuccessful  home  in  a 

petty  village  in  shire,  where  for  years  they  have 

been  struggling  to  raise  a  Girls'  School  with  no  ef- 
fect. Poor  deaf  Robert  (and  the  less  hopeful  for 
being  so)  is  thrown  upon  a  deaf  world,  without  the 
comfort  to  his  father  on  his  death-bed  of  knowing 
him  provided  for.  They  are  left  almost  provision- 
less.     Some   life  assurance  there  is ;  but,  I  fear,  not 

exceeding   .     Their  hopes    must   be  from  your 

Corporation,  which  their  father  has  served  for  fifty 
years.  Who  or  what  are  your  Leading  Members 
now,  I  know  not.  Is  there  any,  to  whom  without 
impertinence,  you  can  represent  the  true  circum- 
stances of  the  family  ?  You  cannot  say  good  enough 
of  poor  R.,  and  his  poor  wife.  Oblige  me  and  the 
dead,  if  you  can. 


OLD  CHINA. 


I  HAVE  an  almost  feminine  partiality  for  old  china. 
When  I  go  to  see  any  great  house,  I  inquire  for  the 
china-closet,  and  next  for  the  picture  gallery.  I 
cannot  defend  the  order  of  preference,  but  by  say- 
ing, that  we  have  all  some  taste  or  other,  of  too 
ancient  a  date  to  admit  of  our  remembering  dis- 
tinctly that  it  was  an  acquired  one.  I  can  call  to 
mind  the  first  play,  and  the  first  exhibition,  that  I 
was  taken  to;  but  I  am  not  conscious  of  a  time 
when  china  jars  and  saucers  were  introduced  into 
my  imagination. 

I  had  no  repugnance  then  —  why  should  I  now 
have?  —  to  those  little,  lawless,  azure-tinctured  gro- 
tesques, that  under  the  notion  of  men  and  women, 
float  about,  uncircumscribed  by  any  element,  in  that 
world  before  perspective  —  a  china  tea-cup. 

I  like  to  see  my  old  friends  —  whom  distance 
cannot  diminish  —  figuring  up  in  the  air  (so  they 
appear  to  our  optics) ,  yet  on  terra  firma  still  —  for 


OLD   CHINA.  195 

SO  we  must  in  courtesy  interpret  that  speck  of  deeper 
blue,  which  the  decorous  artist,  to  prevent  absur- 
dity, has  made  to  spring  up  beneath  their  sandals. 

I  love  the  men  with  women's  faces,  and  the  women, 
if  possible,  with  still  more  womanish  expressions. 

Here  is  a  young  and  courtly  Mandarin,  handing 
tea  to  a  lady  from  a  salvar  —  two  miles  off.  See  how 
distance  seems  to  set  off  respect !  And  here  the 
same  lady,  or  another  —  for  Ukeness  is  identity  on 
tea-cups  —  is  stepping  into  a  little  fairy  boat,  moored 
on  the  hither  side  of  this  calm  garden  river,  with  a 
dainty  mincing  foot,  which  in  a  right  angle  of  inci- 
dence (as  angles  go  in  our  world)  must  infallibly 
land  her  in  the  midst  of  a  flowery  mead  —  a  furlong 
off  on  the  other  side  of  the  same  strange  stream  ! 

Farther  on  —  if  far  or  near  can  be  predicated  of 
their  world  —  see  horses,  trees,  pagodas,  dancing  the 
hays. 

Here  —  a  cow  and  rabbit  couchant,  and  co-exten- 
sive —  so  objects  show,  seen  through  the  lucid  atmos- 
phere of  fine  Cathay. 

I  was  pointing  out  to  my  cousin  last  evening,  over 
our  Hyson,  (which  we  are  old  fashioned  enough  to 
drink  unmixed  still  of  an  afternoon)  some  of  these 
speciosa  miracula  upon  a  set  of  extraordinary  old 
blue  china  (a  recent  purchase)  which  we  were  now 
for  the  first  time  using ;  and  could  not  help  remark- 
ing, how  favourable  circumstances  had  been  to  us  of 


106  OLt>  CHINA. 

late  years,  that  we  could  afford  to  please  the  eye 
sometimes  with  trifles  of  this  sort  —  when  a  passing 
sentiment  seemed  to  over-shade  the  brows  of  my 
companion.  I  am  quick  at  detecting  these  summer 
clouds  in  Bridget. 

"  I  wish  the  good  old  times  would  come  again," 
she  said,  "when  we  were  not  quite  so  rich.  I  do 
not  mean,  that  I  want  to  be  poor ;  but  there  was  a 
middle  state;  " — so  she  was  pleased  to  ramble  on, 
—  "  in  which  I  am  sure  we  were  a  great  deal  happier. 
A  purchase  is  but  a  purchase,  now  that  you  have 
money  enough  and  to  spare.  Formerly  it  used  to  be 
a  triumph.  When  we  coveted  a  cheap  luxury  (and, 
O  !  how  much  ado  I  had  to  get  you  to  consent  in 
those  times  !)  we  were  used  to  have  a  debate  two  or 
three  days  before,  and  to  weigh  the  for  and  against, 
and  think  what  we  might  spare  it  out  of,  and  what 
saving  we  could  hit  upon,  that  should  be  an  equiva- 
lent. A  thing  was  worth  buying  then,  when  we  felt 
the  money  that  we  paid  for  it. 

"Do  you  remember  the  brown  suit,  which  you 
made  to  hang  upon  you,  till  all  your  friends  cried 
shame  upon  you,  it  grew  so  thread-bare  —  and  all 
because  of  that  folio  Beaumont  and  Fletcher,  which 
you  dragged  home  late  at  night  from  Barker's  in 
Covent-garden  ?  Do  you  remember  how  we  eyed  it 
for  weeks  before  we  could  make  up  our  minds  to  the 
purchase,  and  had   not  come  to  a  determination  till 


OLD   CHINA.  197 

it  was  near  ten  o'clock  of  the  Saturday  night,  when 
you  set  off  from  Islington,  fearing  you  should  be  too 
late  —  and  when  the  old  bookseller  with  some  grum- 
bling opened  his  shop,  and  by  the  twinkling  taper  (for 
he  was  setting  bedwards)  lighted  out  the  relic  from 
his  dusty  treasures  —  and  when  you  lugged  it  home, 
wishing  it  were  twice  as  cumbersome  —  and  when 
you  presented  it  to  me  —  and  when  we  were  explor- 
ing the  perfectness  of  it  {collating  you  called  it)  — 
and  while  I  was  repairing  some  of  the  loose  leaves 
with  paste,  which  your  impatience  would  not  suffer 
to  be  left  till  day -break  —  was  there  no  pleasure  in 
being  a  poor  man?  or  can  those  neat  black  clothes 
which  you  wear  now,  and  are  so  careful  to  keep 
brushed,  since  we  have  become  rich  and  finical,  give 
you  half  the  honest  vanity,  with  which  you  flaunted  it 
about  in  that  over- worn  suit  —  your  old  corbeau  — 
for  four  or  five  weeks  longer  than  you  should  have 
done,  to  pacify  your  conscience  for  the  mighty  sum 
of  fifteen  —  or  sixteen  shillings  was  it  ?  —  a  great 
affair  we  thought  it  then  —  which  you  had  lavished 
on  the  old  folio.  Now  you  can  afford  to  buy  any 
book  that  pleases  you,  but  I  do  not  see  that  you  ever 
bring  me  home  any  nice  old  purchases  now. 

*'  When  you  came  home  with  twenty  apologies  for 
laying  out  a  less  number  of  shillings  upon  that  print 
after  Lionardo,  which  we  christened  the  '  Lady 
Blanch ; '    when   you   looked   at  the    purchase,    and 


198  OLD   CHINA. 

thought  of  the  money  —  and  thought  of  the  money, 
and  looked  again  at  the  picture, —  was  there  no 
pleasure  in  being  a  poor  man?  Now,  you  have  noth- 
ing to  do  but  to  walk  into  Colnaghi's,  and  buy  a 
wilderness  of  Lionardos.     Yet  do  you? 

"Then,  do  you  remember  our  pleasant  walks  to 
Enfield,  and  Potter's  Bar,  and  Waltham,  when  we  had 
a  holyday  —  holydays,  and  all  other  fun,  are  gone, 
now  we  are  rich  —  and  the  little  hand-basket  in  which 
I  used  to  deposit  our  day's  fare  of  savory  cold  lamb 
and  salad  —  and  how  you  would  pry  about  at  noon- 
tide for  some  decent  house,  where  we  might  go  in, 
and  produce  our  store  —  only  paying  for  the  ale  that 
you  must  call  for  —  and  speculate  upon  the  looks  of 
the  landlady,  and  whether  she  was  likely  to  allow 
us  a  table-cloth  —  and  wish  for  such  another  honest 
hostess,  as  Izaak  Walton  has  described  many  a  one 
on  the  pleasant  banks  of  the  Lea,  when  he  went  a 
fishing  —  and  sometimes  they  would  prove  obliging 
enough,  and  sometimes  they  would  look  grudgingly 
upon  us  —  but  we  had  cheerful  looks  still  for  one 
another,  and  would  eat  our  plain  food  savorily, 
scarcely  grudging  Piscator  his  Trout  Hall?  Now, 
when  we  go  out  a  day's  pleasuring,  which  is  seldom 
moreover,  we  ride  part  of  the  way  —  and  go  into  a 
fine  inn,  and  order  the  best  of  dinners,  never  debat- 
ing the  expense  —  which,  after  all,  never  has  half  the 
relish  of  those   chance  country  snaps,  when  we  were 


OLD   CHINA. 


199 


at   the  mercy  of  uncertain  usage,  and  a   precarious 
welcome. 

"  You  are  too  proud  to  see  a  play  anywhere  now 
but  in  the  pit.  Do  you  remember  where  it  was  we 
used  to  sit,  when  we  saw  the  battle  of  Hexham,  and 
the  surrender  of  Calais,  and  Bannister  and  Mrs.  Bland 
in  the  Children  in  the  Wood  —  when  we  squeezed  out 
our  shiUings  a-piece  to  sit  three  or  four  times  in  a 
season  in  the  one- shilling  gallery  —  where  you  felt  all 
the  time  that  you  ought  not  to  have  brought  me  — 
and  more  strongly  I  felt  obligation  to  you  for  having 
brought  me  —  and  the  pleasure  was  the  better  for  a 
little  shame  —  and  when  the  curtain  drew  up,  what 
cared  we  for  our  place  in  the  house,  or  what  mattered 
it  where  we  were  sitting,  when  our  thoughts  were  with 
Rosalind  in  Arden,  or  with  Viola  at  the  Court  of 
Illyria?  You  used  to  say,  that  the  gallery  was  the 
best  place  of  all  for  enjoying  a  play  socially  —  that 
the  relish  of  such  exhibitions  must  be  in  propor- 
tion to  the  infrequency  of  going  —  that  the  company 
we  met  there,  not  being  in  general  readers  of  plays, 
were  obliged  to  attend  the  more,  and  did  attend,  to 
what  was  going  on,  on  the  stage  —  because  a  word 
lost  would  have  been  a  chasm,  which  it  was  impos- 
sible for  them  to  fill  up.  With  such  reflections  we 
consoled  our  pride  then  —  and  I  appeal  to  you, 
whether,  as  a  woman,  I  met  generally  with  less  at- 
tention and  accommodation,  than  I  have  done  since 


200  OLD   CHINA. 

in  more  expensive  situations  in  the  house?  The 
getti.ig  in  indeed,  and  the  crowding  up  those  incon- 
venient staircases,  was  bad  enough,  —  but  there  was 
still  a  law  of  civility  to  woman  recognised  to  quite  as 
great  an  extent  as  we  ever  found  in  the  other  pas- 
sages—  and  how  a  little  difficulty  overcome  height- 
ened the  snug  seat,  and  the  play,  afterwards  !  Now 
we  can  only  pay  our  money,  and  walk  in.  You  can- 
not see,  you  say,  in  the  galleries  now.  I  am  sure  we 
saw,  and  heard  too,  well  enough  then  —  but  sight, 
and  all,  I  think,  is  gone  with  our  property. 

"  There  was  pleasure  in  eating  strawberries,  before 
they  became  quite  common  —  in  the  first  dish  of 
peas,  while  they  were  yet  dear  —  to  have  them  for 
a  nice  supper,  a  treat.  What  treat  can  we  have  now? 
If  we  were  to  treat  ourselves  now  —  that  is,  to  have 
dainties  a  little  above  our  means,  it  would  be  selfish 
and  wicked.  It  is  the  very  little  more  that  we  allow 
ourselves  beyond  what  the  actual  poor  can  get  at,  that 
makes  what  I  call  a  treat  —  when  two  people  living 
together,  as  we  have  done,  now  and  then  indulge 
themselves  in  a  cheap  luxury,  which  both  like  ;  while 
each  apologises,  and  is  willing  to  take  both  halves  of 
the  blame  to  his  single  share.  I  see  no  harm  in 
people  making  much  of  themselves  in  that  sense  of 
the  word.  It  may  give  them  a  hint  how  to  make 
much  of  others.  But  now  —  what  I  mean  by  the 
word  —  we  never  do  make  much  of  ourselves.     None 


OLD  CHINA.  20I 

but  the  poor  can  do  it.  I  do  not  mean  the  veriest 
poor  of  all,  but  persons  as  we  were,  just  above 
poverty. 

"  I  know  what  you  were  going  to  say,  that  it  is 
mighty  pleasant  at  the  end  of  the  year  to  make  all 
meet  —  and  much  ado  we  used  to  have  every  Thirty- 
first  Night  of  December  to  account  for  our  exceed- 
ings  —  many  a  long  face  did  you  make  over  your 
puzzled  accounts,  and  in  contriving  to  make  it  out 
how  we  had  spent  so  much  —  or  that  we  had  not 
spent  so  much  —  or  that  it  was  impossible  we  should 
spend  so  much  next  year  —  and  still  we  found  our 
slender  capital  decreasing  —  but  then,  betwixt  ways, 
and  projects,  and  compromises  of  one  sort  or  another, 
and  talk  of  curtailing  this  charge,  and  doing  without 
that  for  the  future  —  and  the  hope  that  youth  brings, 
and  laughing  spirits  (in  which  you  were  never  poor 
till  now,)  we  pocketed  up  our  loss,  and  in  conclu- 
sion, with  '  lusty  brimmers '  (as  you  used  to  quote 
it  out  of  hearty  chee^-ful  Mr,  Cotton,  as  you  called 
him),  we  used  to  welcome  in  the  'coming  guest.' 
Now  we  have  no  reckoning  at  all  at  the  end  of  the 
old  year  —  no  flattering  promises  about  the  new  year 
doing  better  for  us." 

Bridget  is  so  sparing  of  her  speech  on  most  occa- 
sions, that  when  she  gets  into  a  rhetorical  vein,  I  am 
careful  how  I  interrupt  it.  I  could  not  help,  how- 
ever, smiling  at  the  phantom   of  wealth  which  her 


202  OLD  CHINA. 

dear  imagination  had  conjured  up  out  of  a  clear  in- 
come of  poor  —  hundred  pounds  a  year.  "  It  is  true 
we  were  happier  when  we  were  poorer,  but  we  were 
also  younger,  my  cousin.  I  am  afraid  we  must  put 
up  with  the  excess,  for  if  we  were  to  shake  the  super- 
flux  into  the  sea,  we  should  not  much  mend  our- 
selves. That  we  had  much  to  struggle  with,  as  we 
grew  up  together,  we  have  reason  to  be  most  thank- 
ful. It  strengthened,  and  knit  our  compact  closer. 
We  could  never  have  been  what  we  have  been  to 
each  other,  if  we  had  always  had  the  sufficiency  which 
you  now  complain  of.  The  resisting  power  —  those 
natural  dilations  of  the  youthful  spirit,  which  cir- 
cumstances cannot  straiten  —  with  us  are  long  since 
passed  away.  Competence  to  age  is  supplementary 
youth ;  a  sorry  supplement  indeed,  but  I  fear  the 
best  that  is  to  be  had.  We  must  ride,  where  we 
formerly  walked  :  live  better,  and  lie  softer  —  and 
shall  be  wise  to  do  so  —  than  we  had  means  to  do 
in  those  good  old  days  you  speak  of.  Yet  could 
those  days  return  —  could  you  and  I  once  more 
walk  our  thirty  miles  a-day —  could  Bannister  and 
Mrs.  Bland  again  be  young,  and  you  and  I  be  young 
to  see  them  —  could  the  good  old  one  shilling  gallery 
days  return  —  they  are  dreams,  my  cousin,  now  — 
but  could  you  and  I  at  this  moment,  instead  of  this 
quiet  argument,  by  our  well-carpeted  fire-side,  sit- 
ting on  this  luxurious  sofa  —  be  once  more  struggling 


OLD  CHINA.  203 

up  those  inconvenient  stair-cases,  pushed  about,  and 
squeezed,  and  elbowed  by  the  poorest  rabble  of  poor 
gallery  scramblers  —  could  I  once  more  hear  those 
anxious  shrieks  of  yours  —  and  the  delicious  Thank 
Gody  we  are  safe^  which  always  followed  when  the 
topmost  stair,  conquered,  let  in  the  first  light  of  the 
whole  cheerful  theatre  down  beneath  us  —  I  know 
not  the  fathom  line  that  ever  touched  a  descent  so 
deep  as  I  would  be  willing  to  bury  more  wealth  in 

than  Croesus  had,  or  the  great  Jew  R is  supposed 

to  have,  to  purchase  it.  And  now  do  just  look  at  that 
merry  little  Chinese  waiter  holding  an  umbrella,  big 
enough  for  a  bed-tester,  over  the  head  of  that  pretty 
insipid  half-Madona-ish  chit  of  a  lady  in  that  very 
blue  summer  house." 


POPULAR   FALLACIES. 


I. 

THAT   A   BULLY   IS   ALWAYS  A   COWARD. 

This  axiom  contains  a  principle  of  compensation, 
which  disposes  us  to  admit  the  truth  of  it.  But  there 
is  no  safe  trusting  to  dictionaries  and  definitions. 
We  should  more  willingly  fall  in  with  this  popular 
language,  if  we  did  not  find  brutality  sometimes  awk- 
wardly coupled  with  valour  in  the  same  vocabulary. 
The  comic  writers,  with  their  poetical  justice,  have 
contributed  not  a  little  to  mislead  us  upon  this  point. 
To  see  a  hectoring  fellow  exposed  and  beaten  upon 
the  stage,  has  something  in  it  wonderfully  diverting. 
Some  people's  share  of  animal  spirits  is  notoriously 
low  and  defective.  It  has  not  strength  to  raise  a 
vapour,  or  furnish  out  the  wind  of  a  tolerable  bluster. 
These  love  to  be  told  that  huffing  is  no  part  of  valour. 
The  truest  courage  with  them  is  that  which  is  the 
least  noisy  and  obtrusive.  But  confront  one  of  these 
silent  heroes  with  the  swaggerer  of  real  life,  and  his 
confidence  in  the  theory  quickly  vanishes.     Preten- 


POPULAR   FALLACIES.  205 

sions  do  not  uniformly  bespeak  non-performance.  A 
modest  inoffensive  deportment  does  not  necessarily 
imply  valour;  neither  does  the  absence  of  it  justify 
us  in  denying  that  quality.  Hickman  wanted  modesty 
—  we  do  not  mean  him  of  Clarissa  —  but  who  ever 
doubted  his  courage  ?  Even  the  poets  —  upon  whom 
this  equitable  distribution  of  qualities  should  be  most 
binding  —  have  thought  it  agreeable  to  nature  to 
depart  from  the  rule  upon  occasion.  Harapha,  in 
the  "  Agonistes,"  is  indeed  a  bully  upon  the  received 
notions.  Milton  has  made  him  at  once  a  blusterer, 
a  giant,  and  a  dastard.  But  Almanzor,  in  Dryden, 
talks  of  driving  armies  singly  before  him  —  and  does 
it.  Tom  Brown  had  a  shrewder  insight  into  this  kind 
of  character  than  either  of  his  predecessors.  He 
divides  the  palm  more  equably,  and  allows  his  hero 
a  sort  of  dimidiate  pre-eminence  :  — "Bully  Dawson 
kicked  by  half  the  town,  and  half  the  town  kicked 
by  Bully  Dawson."     This  was  true  distributive  justice. 


11. 

THAT   ILL-GOTTEN   GAIN   NEVER    PROSPERS. 

The  weakest  part  of  mankind  have  this  saying  com- 
monest in  their  mouth.  It  is  the  trite  consolation 
administered  to  the  easy  dupe,  when  he  has  been 
tricked  out  of  his  money  or  estate,  that  the  acquisi- 


206  POPULAR   FALLACIES. 

tion  of  it  will  do  the  owner  no  good.  But  the  rogues 
of  this  world  —  the  prudenter  part  of  them,  at  least 
—  know  better ;  and,  if  the  observation  had  been  as 
true  as  it  is  old,  would  not  have  failed  by  this  time  to 
have  discovered  it.  They  have  pretty  sharp  distinc- 
tions of  the  fluctuating  and  the  permanent.  *'  Lightly 
come,  lightly  go,"  is  a  proverb,  which  they  can  very 
well  afford  to  leave,  when  they  leave  little  else,  to  the 
losers.  They  do  not  always  find  manors,  got  by  rapine 
or  chicanery,  insensibly  to  melt  away,  as  the  poets 
will  have  it;  or  that  all  gold  glides,  like  thawing 
snow,  from  the  thief  s  hand  that  grasps  it.  Church 
land,  alienated  to  lay  uses,  was  formerly  denounced 
to  have  this  slippery  quality.  But  some  portions  of 
it  somehow  always  stuck  so  fast,  that  the  denunciators 
have  been  fain  to  postpone  the  prophecy  of  refund- 
ment to  a  late  posterity. 

III. 

THAT   A   MAN   MUST   NOT   LAUGH   AT    HIS   OWN   JEST. 

The  severest  exaction  surely  ever  invented  upon  the 
self-denial  of  poor  human  nature  !  This  is  to  ex- 
pect a  gentleman  to  give  a  treat  without  partaking 
of  it ;  to  sit  esurient  at  his  own  table,  and  commend 
the  flavour  of  his  venison  upon  the  absurd  strength  of 
his  never  touching  it  himself.     On  the  contrary,  we 


POPULAR   FALLACIES.  207 

love  to  see  a  wag  taste  his  own  joke  to  his  party ;  to 
watch  a  quirk,  or  a  merry  conceit,  flickering  upon  the 
lips  some  seconds  before  the  tongue  is  delivered  of 
it.  If  it  be  good,  fresh,  and  racy  —  begotten  of  the 
occasion ;  if  he  that  utters  it  never  thought  it  before, 
he  is  naturally  the  first  to  be  tickled  with  it ;  and  any 
suppression  of  such  complacence  we  hold  to  be  chur- 
lish and  insulting.  What  does  it  seem  to  imply,  but 
that  your  company  is  weak  or  foolish  enough  to  be 
moved  by  an  image  or  a  fancy,  that  shall  stir  you  not 
at  all,  or  but  faintly  ?  This  is  exactly  the  humour  of 
the  fine  gentleman  in  Mandeville,  who,  while  he 
dazzles  his  guests  with  the  display  of  some  costly 
toy,  affects  himself  to  "  see  nothing  considerable  in 
it." 


IV. 


THAT   SUCH   A   ONE   SHOWS   HIS    BREEDING. THAT   IT 

IS   EASY   TO   PERCEIVE   HE   IS   NO    GENIXEMAN. 

A  SPEECH  from  the  poorer  sort  of  people,  which  al- 
ways indicates  that  the  party  vituperated  is  a  gentle- 
man. The  very  fact  which  they  deny,  is  that  which 
galls  and  exasperates  them  to  use  this  language.  The 
forbearance  with  which  it  is  usually  received,  is  a 
proof  what  interpretation  the  bystander  sets  upon  it. 
Of  a  kin  to  this,  and  still  less  politic,  are  the  phrases 


208  POPULAR   FALLACIES. 

with  which,  in  their  street  rhetoric,  they  ply  one 
another  more  grossly  :  —  He  is  a  poor  creature.  — 

He  has  not  a  rag  to  cover dr'c.  ;  though  this  last, 

we  confess,  is  more  frequently  applied  by  females  to 
females.  They  do  not  perceive  that  the  satire  glances 
upon  themselves.  A  poor  man,  of  all  things  in  the 
world,  should  not  upbraid  an  antagonist  with  poverty. 
Are  there  no  other  topics  —  as,  to  tell  him  his  father 

was  hanged  —  his  sister,  &c. ,  without  exposing 

a  secret,  which  should  be  kept  snug  between  them ; 
and  doing  an  affront  to  the  order  to  which  they  have 
the  honour  equally  to  belong?  All  this  while  they  do 
not  see  how  the  wealthier  man  stands  by  and  laughs 
in  his  sleeve  at  both. 


THAT   THE   POOR   COPY   THE   VICES   OF   THE   RICH. 

A  SMOOTH  text  to  the  latter ;  and,  preached  from  the 
pulpit,  is  sure  of  a  docile  audience  from  the  pews 
lined  with  satin.  It  is  twice  sitting  upon  velvet  to  a 
foolish  squire  to  be  told,  that  he  —  and  not  perverse 
nature,  as  the  homilies  would  make  us  imagine,  is  the 
true  cause  of  all  the  irregularities  in  his  parish.  This 
is  striking  at  the  root  of  free-will  indeed,  and  denying 
the  originality  of  sin  in  any  sense.  But  men  are  not 
such  implicit  sheep  as  this  comes   to.     If  the  absti- 


POPULAR   FALLACIES.  2O9 

nence  from  evil  on  the  part  of  the  upper  classes  is  to 
derive  itself  from  no  higher  principle,  than  the  appre- 
hension of  setting  ill  patterns  to  the  lower,  we  beg 
leave  to  discharge  them  from  all  squeamishness  on 
that  score  :  they  may  even  take  their  fill  of  pleasures, 
where  they  can  find  them.  The  Genius  of  Poverty, 
hampered  and  straitened  as  it  is,  is  not  so  barren  of 
invention  but  it  can  trade  upon  the  staple  of  its  own 
vice,  without  drawing  upon  their  capital.  The  poor 
are  not  quite  such  servile  imitators  as  they  take  them 
for.  Some  of  them  are  very  clever  artists  in  their 
way.  Here  and  there  we  find  an  original.  Who 
taught  the  poor  to  steal,  to  pilfer?  They  did  not  go 
to  the  great  for  schoolmasters  in  these  faculties  surely. 
It  is  well  if  in  some  vices  they  allow  us  to  be  —  no 
copyists.  In  no  other  sense  is  it  true  that  the  poor 
copy  them,  than  as  servants  may  be  said  to  take  after 
their  masters  and  mistresses,  when  they  succeed  to 
their  reversionary  cold  meats.  If  the  master,  from 
indisposition  or  some  other  cause,  neglect  his  food, 
the  servant  dines  notwithstanding. 

"  O,  but  (some  will  say)  the  force  of  example  is 
great."  We  knew  a  lady  who  was  so  scrupulous  on 
this  head,  that  she  would  put  up  with  the  calls  of  the 
most  impertinent  visitor,  rather  than  let  her  servant 
say  she  was  not  at  home,  for  fear  of  teaching  her 
maid  to  tell  an  untruth ;  and  this  in  the  very  face  of 
the  fact,  which  she  knew  well  enough,  that  the  wench 
14 


210  POPULAR   FALLACIES. 

was  one  of  the  greatest  liars  upon  the  earth  without 
teaching;  so  much  so,  that  her  mistress  possibly 
never  heard  two  words  of  consecutive  truth  from  her 
in  her  life.  But  nature  must  go  for  nothing :  example 
must  be  everything.  This  liar  in  grain,  who  never 
opened  her  mouth  without  a  He,  must  be  guarded 
against  a  remote  inference,  which  she  (pretty  casuist !) 
might  possibly  draw  from  a  form  of  words  —  literally 
false,  but  essentially  deceiving  no  one  —  that  under 
some  circumstances  a  fib  might  not  be  so  exceedingly 
sinful  —  a  fiction,  too,  not  at  all  in  her  own  way,  or 
one  that  she  could  be  suspected  of  adopting,  for  few 
servant-wenches  care  to  be  denied  to  visitors. 

This  word  example  reminds  us  of  another  fine  word 
which  is  in  use  upon  these  occasions  —  encouragement. 
"  People  in  our  sphere  must  not  be  thought  to  give 
encouragement  to  such  proceedings."  To  such  a 
frantic  height  is  this  principle  capable  of  being  car- 
ried, that  we  have  known  individuals  who  have 
thought  it  within  the  scope  of  their  influence  to  sanc- 
tion despair,  and  give  eclat  to  —  suicide.  A  domes- 
tic in  the  family  of  a  county  member  lately  deceased, 
for  love,  or  some  unknown  cause,  cut  his  throat,  but 
not  successfully.  The  poor  fellow  was  otherwise  much 
loved  and  respected ;  and  great  interest  was  used  in 
his  behalf,  upon  his  recovery,  that  he  might  be  per- 
mitted to  retain  his  place ;  his  word  being  first 
pledged,  not  without    some    substantial   sponsors   to 


POPULAR  FALLACIES.  211 

promise  for  him,  that  the  like  should  never  happen 
again.  His  master  was  inclinable  to  keep  him,  but 
his  mistress  thought  otherwise ;  and  John  in  the  end 
was  dismissed,  her  ladyship  declaring  that  she  "  could 
not  think  of  encouraging  any  such  doings  in  the 
county." 

VI. 

THAT   ENOUGH   IS   AS   GOOD   AS   A    FEAST. 

Not  a  man,  woman,  or  child  in  ten  miles  round 
Guildhall,  who  really  believes  this  saying.  The  in- 
ventor of  it  did  not  believe  it  himself.  It  was  made 
in  revenge  by  somebody,  who  was  disappointed  of  a 
regale.  It  is  a  vile  cold-scrag-of-mutton  sophism ;  a 
lie  palmed  upon  the  palate,  which  knows  better 
things.  If  nothing  else  could  be  said  for  a  feast,  this 
is  sufficient,  that  from  the  superflux  there  is  usually 
something  left  for  the  next  day.  Morally  interpreted, 
it  belongs  to  a  class  of  proverbs,  which  have  a  ten- 
dency to  make  us  undervalue  money.  Of  this  cast 
are  those  notable  observations,  that  money  is  not 
health  ;  riches  cannot  purchase  everything  :  the  met- 
aphor which  makes  gold  to  be  mere  muck,  with  the 
morality  which  traces  fine  clothing  to  the  sheep's 
back,  and  denounces  pearl  as  the  unhandsome  excre- 
tion of  an  oyster.      Hence,   too,  the  phrase  which 


212  POPULAR   FALLACIES. 

imputes  dirt  to  acres  —  a  sophistry  so  barefaced,  that 
even  the  Hteral  sense  of  it  is  true  only  in  a  wet  season. 
This,  and  abundance  of  similar  sage  saws  assuming 
to  inculcate  content,  we  verily  believe  to  have  been 
the  invention  of  some  cunning  borrower,  who  had 
designs  upon  the  purse  of  his  wealthier  neighbour, 
which  he  could  only  hope  to  carry  by  force  of  these 
verbal  jugglings.  Translate  any  one  of  these  sayings 
out  of  the  artful  metonyme  which  envelopes  it,  and 
the  trick  is  apparent.  Goodly  legs  and  shoulders  of 
mutton,  exhilarating  cordials,  books,  pictures,  the 
opportunities  of  seeing  foreign  countries,  indepen- 
dence, heart's  ease,  a  man's  own  time  to  himself,  are 
not  muck  —  however  we  may  be  pleased  to  scandalise 
with  that  appellation  the  faithful  metal  that  provides 
them  for  us. 


VII. 

OF    TWO     DISPUTANTS,    THE    WARMEST    IS     GENERALLY     IN 
THE   WRONG. 

Our  experience  would  lead  us  to  quite  an  opposite 
conclusion.  Temper,  indeed,  is  no  test  of  truth  ;  but 
warmth  and  earnestness  are  a  proof  at  least  of  a 
man's  own  conviction  of  the  rectitude  of  that  which 
he  maintains.  Coolness  is  as  often  the  result  of  an 
unprincipled  indifference  to  truth  or  falsehood,  as  of 


POPULAR   FALLACIES.  213 

a  sober  confidence  in  a  man's  own  side  in  a  dispute. 
Nothing  is  more  insulting  sometimes  than  the  appear- 
ance of  this  philosophic  temper.     There  is  little  Titu- 
bus,  the  stammering  law- stationer  in  Lincoln's  Inn  — 
we  have  seldom  known  this  shrewd  little  fellow  en- 
gaged in  an  argument  where  we  were  not  convinced 
he  had  the  best  of  it,  if  his  tongue  would  but  fairly 
have  seconded  him.     When  he  has  been  spluttering 
excellent  broken  sense  for  an  hour  together,  writhing 
and  labouring  to  be  delivered  of  the  point  of  dispute 
—  the  very  gist  of  the  controversy  knocking  at  his 
teeth,    which    like    some    obstinate    iron-grating   still 
obstructed    its   deliverance  —  his    puny   frame   con- 
vulsed, and  face  reddening  all  over  at  an  unfairness 
in  the  logic  which  he  wanted  articulation  to  expose, 
it  has  moved  our  gall  to  see  a  smooth  portly  fellow 
of  an  adversary,  that  cared  not  a  button  for  the  merits 
of  the  question,  by  merely  laying  his  hand  upon  the 
head  of  the  stationer,  and  desiring  him  to  be  calm 
(your  tall  disputants  have  always  the  advantage),  with 
a  provoking  sneer  carry  the  argument  clean  from  him 
in  the  opinion  of  all  the  by-standers,  who  have  gone 
away  clearly  convinced  that  Titubus  must  have  been 
in  the  wrong,  because  he  was  in  a  passion ;   and  that 

Mr. ,  meaning  his  opponent,  is  one  of  the  fairest, 

and  at  the  same  time  one  of  the  most  dispassionate 
arguers  breathing. 


214  POPULAR  FALLACIES. 


VIII. 

THAT   VERBAL   ALLUSIONS    ARE    NOT    WIT,    BECAUSE    THEY 
WILL   NOT    BEAR   A   TRANSLATION. 

The  same  might  be  said  of  the  wittiest  local  allu- 
sions. A  custom  is  sometimes  as  difficult  to  explain 
to  a  foreigner  as  a  pun.  What  would  become  of  a 
great  part  of  the  wit  of  the  last  age,  if  it  were  tried 
by  this  test?  How  would  certain  topics,  as  alder- 
manity,  cuckoldry,  have  sounded  to  a  Terentian 
auditory,  though  Terence  himself  had  been  alive  to 
translate  them?  Senator  urbanus,  with  Curruca  to 
boot  for  a  synonym,  would  but  faintly  have  done  the 
business.  Words,  involving  notions,  are  hard  enough 
to  render ;  it  is  too  much  to  expect  us  to  translate  a 
sound,  and  give  an  elegant  version  to  a  jingle.  The 
Virgilian  harmony  is  not  translatable,  but  by  substi- 
tuting harmonious  sounds  in  another  language  for  it. 
To  Latinise  a  pun,  we  must  seek  a  pun  in  Latin,  that 
will  answer  to  it ;  as,  to  give  an  idea  of  the  double 
endings  in  Hudibras,  we  must  have  recourse  to  a 
similar  practice  in  the  old  monkish  doggrel.  Dennis, 
the  fiercest  oppugner  of  puns  in  ancient  or  modem 
times,  professes  himself  highly  tickled  with  the  "a 
stick"  chiming  to  "ecclesiastic."  Yet  what  is  this 
but  a  species  of  pun,  a  verbal  consonance  ? 


POPULAR   FALLACIES.  21$ 


IX. 


THAT   THE  WORST   PUNS   ARE   THE    BEST. 

If  by  worst  be  only  meant  the  most  far-fetched 
and  startling,  we  agree  to  it.  A  pun  is  not  bound 
by  the  laws  which  limit  nicer  wit.  It  is  a  pistol  let 
off  at  the  ear;  not  a  feather  to  tickle  the  intellect. 
It  is  an  antic  which  does  not  stand  upon  manners, 
but  comes  bounding  into  the  presence,  and  does 
not  show  the  less  comic  for  being  dragged  in  some- 
times by  the  head  and  shoulders.  What  though  it 
limp  a  little,  or  prove  defective  in  one  leg  —  all  the 
better.  A  pun  may  easily  be  too  curious  and  arti- 
ficial. Who  has  not  at  one  time  or  other  been  at  a 
party  of  professors  (himself  perhaps  an  old  offender 
in  that  line),  where,  after  ringing  a  round  of  the 
most  ingenious  conceits,  every  man  contributing  his 
shot,  and  some  there  the  most  expert  shooters  of  the 
day ;  after  making  a  poor  word  run  the  gauntlet  till 
it  is  ready  to  drop ;  after  hunting  and  winding  it 
through  all  the  possible  ambages  of  similar  sounds ; 
after  squeezing,  and  hauling,  and  tugging  at  it,  till  the 
very  milk  of  it  will  not  yield  a  drop  further, —  suddenly 
some  obscure,  unthought  of  fellow  in  a  corner,  who 
was  never  'prentice  to  the  trade,  whom  the  company 
for  very  pity  passed  over,  as  we  do  by  a  known  poor 


2l6  POPULAR   FALLACIES. 

man  when  a  money-subscription  is  going  round,  no 
one  calling  upon  him  for  his  quota  —  has  all  at  once 
come  out  with  something  so  whimsical,  yet  so  perti-. 
nent ;  so  brazen  in  its  pretensions,  yet  so  impossible 
to  be  denied ;  so  exquisitely  good,  and  so  deplorably 
bad,  at  the  same  time,  —  that  it  has  proved  a  Robin 
Hood's  shot ;  anything  ulterior  to  that  is  despaired 
of;  and  the  party  breaks  up,  unanimously  voting  it 
to  be  the  very  worst  (that  is,  best)  pun  of  the  even- 
ing. This  species  of  wit  is  the  better  for  not  being 
perfect  in  all  its  parts.  What  it  gains  in  complete- 
ness, it  loses  in  naturalness.  The  more  exactly  it 
satisfies  the  critical,  the  less  hold  it  has  upon  some 
other  faculties.  The  puns  which  are  most  entertain- 
ing are  those  which  will  least  bear  an  analysis.  Of 
this  kind  is  the  following,  recorded,  with  a  sort  of 
stigma,  in  one  of  Swift's  Miscellanies. 

An  Oxford  scholar,  meeting  a  porter  who  was  carry- 
ing a  hare  through  the  streets,  accosts  him  with  this 
extraordinary  question :  '^  Prithee,  friend,  is  that  thy 
own  hare,  or  a  wig?  " 

There  is  no  excusing  this,  and  no  resisting  it.  A 
man  might  blur  ten  sides  of  paper  in  attempting  a 
defence  of  it  against  a  critic  who  should  be  laughter- 
proof.  The  quibble  in  itself  is  not  considerable.  It 
is  only  a  new  turn  given,  by  a  little  false  pronuncia- 
tion, to  a  very  common,  though  not  very  courteous 
inquiry.       Put   by  one    gentleman    to    another   at   a 


POPULAR  FALLACIES.  21/ 

dinner-party,  it  would  have  been  vapid ;  to  the  mis- 
tress of  the  house,  it  would  have  shown  much  less  wit 
than  rudeness.  We  must  take  in  the  totality  of  time, 
place,  and  person ;  the  pert  look  of  the  inquiring 
scholar,  the  desponding  looks  of  the  puzzled  porter ; 
the  one  stopping  at  leisure,  the  other  hurrying  on 
with  his  burthen ;  the  innocent  though  rather  abrupt 
tendency  of  the  first  member  of  the  question,  with  the 
utter  and  inextricable  irrelevancy  of  the  second ;  the 
place  —  a  public  street,  not  favourable  to  frivolous 
investigations ;  the  affrontive  quality  of  the  primitive 
inquiry  (the  common  question)  invidiously  transferred 
to  the  derivative  (the  new  turn  given  to  it)  in  the 
impHed  satire ;  namely,  that  few  of  that  tribe  are 
expected  to  eat  of  the  good  things  which  they  carry, 
they  being  in  most  countries  considered  rather  as  the 
temporary  trustees  than  owners  of  such  dainties, — 
which  the  fellow  was  beginning  to  understand ;  but 
then  the  wig  again  comes  in,  and  he  can  make  noth- 
ing of  it :  all  put  together  constitute  a  picture : 
Hogarth  could  have  made  it  inteUigible  on  canvass. 
Yet  nine  out  of  ten  critics  will  pronounce  this 
a  very  bad  pun,  because  of  the  defectiveness  in  the 
concluding  member,  which  is  its  very  beauty,  and 
constitutes  the  surprise.  The  same  persons  shall  cry 
up  for  admirable  the  cold  quibble  from  Virgil  about 
the  broken  Cremona*  ;  because  it  is  made  out  in  all 
*  Swift. 


2l8  POPULAR   FALLACIES. 

its  parts,  and  leaves  nothing  to  the  imagination.  We 
venture  to  call  it  cold;  because  of  thousands  who 
have  admired  it,  it  would  be  difficult  to  find  one  who 
has  heartily  chuckled  at  it.  As  appealing  to  the 
judgment  merely  (setting  the  risible  faculty  aside,) 
we  must  pronounce  it  a  monument  of  curious  fehcity. 
But  as  some  stories  are  said  to  be  too  good  to  be 
true,  it  may  with  equal  truth  be  asserted  of  this  bi- 
verbal  allusion,  that  it  is  too  good  to  be  natural.  One 
cannot  help  suspecting  that  the  incident  was  invented 
to  fit  the  line.  It  would  have  been  better  had  it  been 
less  perfect.  Like  some  Virgilian  hemistichs,  it  has 
suffered  by  filling  up.  The  nimium  Vicina  was  enough 
in  conscience  ;  the  Cremonce  afterwards  loads  it.  It 
is  in  fact  a  double  pun ;  and  we  have  always  observed 
that  a  superfoetation  in  this  sort  of  wit  is  dangerous. 
When  a  man  has  said  a  good  thing,  it  is  seldom  politic 
to  follow  it  up.  We  do  not  care  to  be  cheated  a 
second  time ;  or,  perhaps,  the  mind  of  man  (with 
reverence  be  it  spoken)  is  not  capacious  enough  to 
lodge  two  puns  at  a  time.  The  impression,  to  be 
forcible,  must  be  simultaneous  and  undivided. 

X. 

THAT   HANDSOME   IS   THAT   HANDSOME   DOES. 

Those  who  use  this  proverb  can  never  have  seen 
Mrs.  Conrady. 


POPULAR   FALLACIES.  219 

The  soul,  if  we  may  believe  Plotinus,  is  a  ray  from 
the  celestial  beauty.  As  she  partakes  more  or  less  of 
this  heavenly  light,  she  informs,  with  corresponding 
characters,  the  fleshly  tenement  which  she  chooses, 
and  frames  to  herself  a  suitable  mansion. 

All  which  only  proves  that  the  soul  of  Mrs. 
Conrady,  in  her  pre-existent  state,  was  no  great 
judge  of  architecture. 

To  the  same  effect,  in  a  Hymn  in  honour  of  Beauty, 
divine  Spenser,  platonizing,  sings  :  — 

"  Every  spirit  as  it  is  more  pure, 

And  hath  in  it  the  more  of  heavenly  light, 
So  it  the  fairer  body  doth  procure 
To  habit  in,  and  it  more  fairly  dight 
With  cheerful  grace  and  amiable  sight. 
For  of  the  soul  the  body  form  doth  take  : 
For  soul  is  form,  and  doth  the  body  make." 

But  Spenser,  it  is  clear,  never  saw  Mrs.  Conrady. 

These  poets,  we  find,  are  no  safe  guides  in  philos- 
ophy ;  for  here,  in  his  very  next  stanza  but  one,  is  a 
saving  clause,  which  throws  us  all  out  again,  and 
leaves  us  as  much  to  seek  as  ever :  — 

"  Yet  oft  it  falls,  that  many  a  gentle  mind 
Dwells  in  deformed  tabernacle  drown'd, 
Either  by  chance,  against  the  course  of  kind, 
Or  through  unaptness  in  the  substance  found, 
Which  it  assumed  of  some  stubborn  ground. 
That  will  not  yield  unto  her  form's  direction, 
But  is  perform'd  with  some  foul  imperfection." 

/ 


220  POPULAR   FALLACIES. 

From  which  it  would  follow,  that  Spenser  had  seen 
somebody  like  Mrs.  Conrady. 

The  spirit  of  this  good  lady  —  her  previous  anima 
—  must  have  stumbled  upon  one  of  these  untoward 
tabernacles  which  he  speaks  of.  A  more  rebellious 
commodity  of  clay  for  a  ground,  as  the  poet  calls 
it,  no  gentle  mind  —  and  sure  her's  is  one  of  the 
gentlest  —  ever  had  to  deal  with. 

Pondering  upon  her  inexpHcable  visage  —  inex- 
plicable, we  mean,  but  by  this  modification  of  the 
theory  —  we  have  come  to  a  conclusion  that,  if  one 
must  be  plain,  it  is  better  to  be  plain  all  over,  than, 
amidst  a  tolerable  residue  of  features,  to  hang  out 
one  that  shall  be  exceptionable.  No  one  can  say  of 
Mrs.  Conrady's  countenance,  that  it  would  be  better 
if  she  had  but  a  nose.  It  is  impossible  to  pull  her 
to  pieces  in  this  manner.  We  have  seen  the  most 
malicious  beauties  of  her  own  sex  baffled  in  the  at- 
tempt at  a  selection.  The  tout  ensemble  defies  par- 
ticularising. It  is  too  complete  —  too  consistent,  as 
we  may  say  —  to  admit  of  these  invidious  reserva- 
tions. It  is  not  as  if  some  Apelles  had  picked  out 
here  a  lip  —  and  there  a  chin  —  out  of  the  collected 
ugliness  of  Greece,  to  frame  a  model  by.  It  is  a 
symmetrical  whole.  We  challenge  the  minutest  con- 
noisseur to  cavil  at  any  part  or  parcel  of  the  coun- 
tenance in  question;  to  say  that  this,  or  that,  is 
improperly  placed.     We  are  convinced  that  true  ugli- 


POPULAR   FALLACIES.  221 

ness,  no  less  than  is  affirmed  of  true  beauty,  is  the 
result  of  harmony.  Like  that  too  it  reigns  without  a 
competitor.  No  one  ever  saw  Mrs.  Conrady,  without 
pronouncing  her  to  be  the  plainest  woman  that  he 
ever  met  with  in  the  course  of  his  life.  The  first 
time  that  you  are  indulged  with  a  sight  of  her  face, 
is  an  era  in  your  existence  ever  after.  You  are  glad 
to  have  seen  it  —  like  Stonehenge.  No  one  can  pre- 
tend to  forget  it.  No  one  ever  apologised  to  her  for 
meeting  her  in  the  street  on  such  a  day  and  not 
knowing  her :  the  pretext  would  be  too  bare.  No- 
body can  mistake  her  for  another.  Nobody  can  say 
of  her,  "  I  think  I  have  seen  that  face  somewhere, 
but  I  cannot  call  to  mind  where."  You  must  remem- 
ber that  in  such  a  parlour  it  first  struck  you  —  Hke  a 
bust.  You  wondered  where  the  owner  of  the  house 
had  picked  it  up.  You  wondered  more  when  it 
began  to  move  its  lips  —  so  mildly  too  !  No  one 
ever  thought  of  asking  her  to  sit  for  her  picture. 
Lockets  are  for  remembrance ;  and  it  would  be  clearly 
superfluous  to  hang  an  image  at  your  heart,  which, 
once  seen,  can  never  be  out  of  it.  It  is  not  a  mean 
face  either;  its  entire  originality  precludes  that. 
Neither  is  it  of  that  order  of  plain  faces  which  im- 
prove upon  acquaintance.  Some  very  good  but  ordi- 
nary people,  by  an  unwearied  perseverance  in  good 
offices,  put  a  cheat  upon  our  eyes :  juggle  our  senses 
out  of  their  natural  impressions ;  and  set  us  upon  dis- 
covering good  indications  in  a  countenance,  which  at 


222  POPULAR   FALLACIES. 

first  sight  promised  nothing  less.  We  detect  gentle- 
ness, which  had  escaped  us,  lurking  about  an  under 
lip.  But  when  Mrs.  Conrady  has  done  you  a  service, 
her  face  remains  the  same ;  when  she  has  done  you  a 
thousand,  and  you  know  that  she  is  ready  to  double 
the  number,  still  it  is  that  individual  face.  Neither 
can  you  say  of  it,  that  it  would  be  a  good  face  if  it 
was  not  marked  by  the  small  pox  —  a  compliment 
which  is  always  more  admissive  than  excusatory  —  for 
either  Mrs.  Conrady  never  had  the  small  pox ;  or,  as 
we  say,  took  it  kindly.  No,  it  stands  upon  its  own 
merits  fairly.  There  it  is.  It  is  her  mark,  her 
token;  that  which  she  is  known  by. 

A 

XL 

THAT   WE   MUST   NOT   LOOK   A   GIFT-HORSE   IN   THE 
MOUTH, 

Nor  a  lady's  age  in  the  parish  register.  We  hope 
we  have  more  delicacy  than  to  do  either :  but  some 
faces  spare  us  the  trouble  of  these  dental  inquiries. 
And  what  if  the  beast,  which  my  friend  would  force 
upon  my  acceptance,  prove,  upon  the  face  of  it,  a 
sorry  Rozinante,  a  lean,  ill-favoured  jade,  whom  no 
gentleman  could  think  of  setting  up  in  his  stables? 
Must  I,  rather  than  not  be  obliged  to  my  friend,  make 
her  a  companion  to  Eclipse  or  Lightfoot?  A  horse- 
giver,  no  more  than  a  horse-seller,  has  a  right  to  palm 
his  spavined  article  upon  us  for  good  ware.     An  equiv- 


t»OPULAR   FALLACIES.  223 

alent  is  expected  in  either  case ;  and,  with  my  own 
good  will,  I  would  no  more  be  cheated  out  of  my 
thanks,  than  out  of  my  money.  Some  people  have  a 
knack  of  putting  upon  you  gifts  of  no  real  value,  to 
engage  you  to  substantial  gratitude.  We  thank  them 
for  nothing.  Our  friend  Mitis  carries  this  humour 
of  never  refusing  a  present,  to  the  very  point  of 
absurdity  —  if  it  were  possible  to  couple  the  ridicu- 
lous with  so  much  mistaken  delicacy,  and  real  good- 
nature. Not  an  apartment  in  his  fine  house  (and 
he  has  a  true  taste  in  household  decorations),  but 
is  stuffed  up  with  some  preposterous  print  or  mir- 
ror —  the  worst  adapted  to  his  pannels  that  may 
be  —  the  presents  of  his  friends  that  .know  his 
weakness ;  while  his  noble  Vandykes  are  displaced^ 
to  make  room  for  a  set  of  daubs,  the  work  of  some 
wretched  artist  of  his  acquaintance,  who,  having  had 
them  returned  upon  his  hands  for  bad  likenesses, 
finds  his  account  in  bestowing  them  here  gratis.  The 
good  creature  has  not  the  heart  to  mortify  the  painter 
at  the  expense  of  an  honest  refusal.  It  is  pleasant 
(if  it  did  not  vex  one  at  the  same  time)  to  see  him 
sitting  in  his  dining  parlour,  surrounded  with  obscure 
aunts  and  cousins  to  God  knows  whom,  while  the  true 
Lady  Marys  and  Lady  Bettys  of  his  own  honourable 
family,  in  favour  to  these  adopted  frights,  are  con- 
signed to  the  staircase  and  the  lumber-room.  In  like 
manner  his  goodly  shelves  are  one  by  one  stript  of  his 
favourite  old  authors,  to  give  place  to  a  collection  of 


224  POPULAR   FALLACIES. 

presentation  copies  —  the  flower  and  bran  of  modem 
poetry.  A  presentation  copy,  reader  —  if  haply  you 
are  yet  innocent  of  such  favours  —  is  a  copy  of  a 
book  which  does  not  sell,  sent  you  by  the  author, 
with  his  foolish  autograph  at  the  beginning  of  it ;  for 
which,  if  a  stranger,  he  only  demands  your  friendship  ; 
if  a  brother  author,  he  expects  from  you  a  book  of 
yours  which  does  sell,  in  return.  We  can  speak  to 
experience,  having  by  us  a  tolerable  assortment  of 
these  gift-horses.  Not  to  ride  a  metaphor  to  death 
—  we  are  willing  to  acknowledge,  that  in  some  gifts 
there  is  sense.  A  duplicate  out  of  a  friend's  library 
(where  he  has  more  than  one  copy  of  a  rare  author) 
is  inteUigible.  There  are  favours,  short  of  the  pecu- 
niary —  a  thing  not  fit  to  be  hinted  at  among  gen- 
tlemen —  which  confer  as  much  grace  upon  the 
acceptor  as  the  offerer :  the  kind,  we  confess,  which 
is  most  to  our  palate,  is  of  those  little  conciliatory 
missives,  which  for  their  vehicle  generally  choose  a 
hamper  —  little  odd  presents  of  game,  fruit,  perhaps 
wine  —  though  it  is  essential  to  the  delicacy  of  the 
latter  that  it  be  home-made.  We  love  to  have  our 
friend  in  the  country  sitting  thus  at  our  table  by 
proxy ;  to  apprehend  his  presence  (though  a  hundred 
miles  may  be  between  us)  by  a  turkey,  whose  goodly 
aspect  reflects  to  us  his  "  plump  corpusculum ;  "  to 
taste  him  in  grouse  or  woodcock ;  to  feel  him  ghding 
down  in  the  toast  peculiar  to  the  latter ;  to  concor- 


POPULAR  FALLACIES.  22$ 

porate  him  in  a  slice  of  Canterbury  brawn.  This  is 
indeed  to  have  him  within  ourselves;  to  know  him 
intimately :  such  participation  is  methinks  unitive,  as 
the  old  theologians  phrase  it.  For  these  considera- 
tions we  should  be  sorry  if  certain  restrictive  regu- 
lations, which  are  thought  to  bear  hard  upon  the 
peasantry  of  this  country,  were  entirely  done  away 
with.  A  hare,  as  the  law  now  stands,  makes  many 
friends.  Caius  conciliates  Titius  (knowing  his  goiU) 
with  a  leash  of  partridges.  Titius  (suspecting  his 
partiality  for  them)  passes  them  to  Lucius;  who  in 
his  turn,  preferring  his  friend's  relish  to  his  own, 
makes  them  over  to  Marcius ;  till  in  their  ever-widen- 
ing progress,  and  round  of  unconscious  circum-migra- 
tion,  they  distribute  the  seeds  of  harmony  over  half 
a  parish.  We  are  well  disposed  to  this  kind  of  sen- 
sible remembrances ;  and  are  the  less  apt  to  be  taken 
by  those  little  airy  tokens  —  impalpable  to  the  palate 
—  which,  under  the  names  of  rings,  lockets,  keep- 
sakes, amuse  some  people's  fancy  mightily.  We 
could  never  away  with  these  indigestible  trifles.  They 
are  the  very  kickshaws  and  foppery  of  friendship. 

XII. 

THAT   HOME    IS    HOME   THOUGH    FT   IS    NEVER   SO 
HOMELY. 

Homes  there  are,  we  are  sure,  that  are  no  homes :  the 

home  of  the  very  poor  man,  and  another  which  we 

15 


226  POPULAR   FALLACIES. 

shall  speak  to  presently.  Crowded  places  of  cheap 
entertainment,  and  the  benches  of  alehouses,  if  they 
could  speak,  might  bear  mournful  testimony  to  the 
first.  To  them  the  very  poor  man  resorts  for  an 
image  of  the  home,  which  he  cannot  find  at  home. 
For  a  starved  grate,  and  a  scanty  firing,  that  is  not 
enough  to  keep  alive  the  natural  heat  in  the  fingers 
of  so  many  shivering  children  with  their  mother,  he 
finds  in  the  depth  of  winter  always  a  blazing  hearth, 
and  a  hob  to  warm  his  pittance  of  beer  by.  Instead 
of  the  clamours  of  a  wife,  made  gaunt  by  famish- 
ing, he  meets  with  a  cheerful  attendance  beyond  the 
merits  of  the  trifle  which  he  can  afford  to  spend.  He 
has  companions  which  his  home  denies  him,  for  the 
very  poor  man  has  no  visiters.  He  can  look  into  the 
goings  on  of  the  world,  and  speak  a  little  to  politics. 
At  home  there  are  no  politics  stirring,  but  the  domes- 
tic. All  interests,  real  or  imaginary,  all  topics  that 
should  expand  the  mind  of  man,  and  connect  him  to 
a  sympathy  with  general  existence,  are  crushed  in  the 
absorbing  consideration  of  food  to  be  obtained  for  the 
family.  Beyond  the  price  of  bread,  news  is  sense- 
less and  impertinent.  At  home  there  is  no  larder. 
Here  there  is  at  least  a  show  of  plenty ;  and  while  he 
cooks  his  lean  scrap  of  butcher's  meat  before  the  com- 
mon bars,  or  munches  his  humbler  cold  viands,  his 
relishing  bread  and  cheese  with  an  onion,  in  a  corner, 
where  no  one  reflects  upon  his  poverty,  he  has  sight 


POPULAR  FALLACIES.  22; 

of  the  substantial  joint  providing  for  the  landlord  and 
his  family.  He  takes  an  interest  in  the  dressing  of 
it ;  and  while  he  assists  in  removing  the  trivet  from 
the  fire,  he  feels  that  there  is  such  a  thing  as  beef 
and  cabbage,  which  he  was  beginning  to  forget  at 
home.  All  this  while  he  deserts  his  wife  and  chil- 
dren. But  what  wife,  and  what  children?  Prosper- 
ous men,  who  object  to  this  desertion,  image  to 
themselves  some  clean  contented  family  like  that 
which  they  go  home  to.  But  look  at  the  counte- 
nance of  the  poor  wives  who  follow  and  persecute 
their  good  man  to  the  door  of  the  public  house,  which 
he  is  about  to  enter,  when  something  Hke  shame  would 
restrain  him,  if  stronger  misery  did  not  induce  him 
to  pass  the  threshold.  That  face,  ground  by  want, 
in  which  every  cheerful,  every  conversable  lineament 
has  been  long  effaced  by  misery,  —  is  that  a  face  to 
stay  at  home  with  ?  is  it  more  a  woman,  or  a  wild 
cat  ?  alas  !  it  is  the  face  of  the  wife  of  his  youth,  that 
once  smiled  upon  him.  It  can  smile  no  longer. 
What  comforts  can  it  share?  what  burthens  can  it 
lighten  ?  Oh,  't  is  a  fine  thing  to  talk  of  the  humble 
meal  shared  together  !  But  what  if  there  be  no  bread 
in  the  cupboard?  The  innocent  prattle  of  his  chil- 
dren takes  out  the  sting  of  a  man's  poverty.  But  the 
children  of  the  very  poor  do  not  prattle.  It  is  none 
of  the  least  frightful  features  in  that  condition,  that 
there  is  no  childishness  in  its  dwellings.     Poor  people, 


228  POPULAR  FALLACIES. 

said  a  sensible  old  nurse  to  us  once,  do  not  bring  up 
their  children ;  they  drag  them  up.  The  little  care- 
less darling  of  the  wealthier  nursery,  in  their  hovel  is 
transformed  betimes  into  a  premature  reflecting  per- 
son. No  one  has  time  to  dandle  it,  no  one  thinks  it 
worth  while  to  coax  it,  to  soothe  it,  to  toss  it  up  and 
down,  to  humour  it.  There  is  none  to  kiss  away  its 
tears.  If  it  cries,  it  can  only  be  beaten.  It  has  been 
prettily  said  that  "  a  babe  is  fed  with  milk  and  praise." 
But  the  aliment  of  this  poor  babe  was  thin,  unnourish 
ing :  the  return  to  its  little  baby-tricks,  and  efforts 
to  engage  attention,  bitter  ceaseless  objurgation.  It 
never  had  a  toy,  or  knew  what  a  coral  meant.  It 
grew  up  without  the  lullaby  of  nurses,  it  was  a  stranger 
to  the  patient  fondle,  the  hushing  caress,  the  attract- 
ing novelty,  the  costlier  plaything,  or  the  cheaper  off- 
hand contrivance  to  divert  the  child ;  the  prattled 
nonsense  (best  sense  to  it),  the  wise  impertinences, 
the  wholesome  Hes,  the  apt  story  interposed,  that  puts 
a  stop  to  present  sufferings,  and  awakens  the  passion 
of  young  wonder.  It  was  never  sung  to  —  no  one 
ever  told  to  it  a  tale  of  the  nursery.  It  was  dragged 
up,  to  live  or  to  die  as  it  happened.  It  had  no  young 
dreams.  It  broke  at  once  into  the  iron  realities  of 
life.  A  child  exists  not  for  the  very  poor  as  any  ob- 
ject of  dalliance ;  it  is  only  another  mouth  to  be  fed, 
a  pair  of  little  hands  to  be  betimes  inured  to  labour. 
It  is  the  rival,  till  it  can  be  the  co-operator,  for  food 


POPULAR   FALLACIES.  229 

with  the  parent.  It  is  never  his  mirth,  his  diversion, 
his  solace ;  it  never  makes  him  young  again,  with 
recalling  his  young  times.  The  children  of  the  very 
poor  have  no  young  times.  It  makes  the  very  heart 
to  bleed  to  overhear  the  casual  street-talk  between  a 
poor  woman  and  her  little  girl,  a  woman  of  tne  better 
sort  of  poor,  in  a  condition  rather  above  the  squalid 
beings  which  we  have  been  contemplating.  It  is  not 
of  toys,  of  nursery  books,  of  summer  holidays  (fitting 
that  age)  ;  of  the  promised  sight,  or  play ;  of  praised 
sufficiency  at  school.  It  is  of  mangling  and  clear- 
starching, of  the  price  of  coals,  or  of  potatoes.  The 
questions  of  the  child,  that  should  be  the  very  out- 
pourings of  curiosity  in  idleness,  are  marked  with 
forecast  and  melancholy  providence.  It  has  come  to 
be  a  woman,  before  it  was  a  child.  It  has  learned 
to  go  to  market ;  it  chaffers,  it  haggles,  it  envies,  it 
murmurs ;  it  is  knowing,  acute,  sharpened ;  it  never 
prattles.  Had  we  not  reason  to  say,  that  the  home 
of  the  very  poor  is  no  home  ? 

There  is  yet  another  home,  which  we  are  con- 
strained to  deny  to  be  one.  It  has  a  larder,  which 
the  home  of  the  poor  man  wants;  its  fireside  con- 
veniences, of  which  the  poor  dream  not.  But  with 
all  this,  it  is  no  home.  It  is  — the  house  of  the  man 
that  is  infested  with  many  visiters.  May  we  be 
branded  for  the  veriest  churl,  if  we  deny  our  heart 
to  the  many  noble- hearted  friends  that  at  times  ex- 


230  POPULAR   FALLACIES. 

change  their  dwelUng  for  our  poor  roof !     It  is  not  of 
guests  that  we  complain,  but  of  endless,  purposeless 
visitants  ;  droppers  in,  as  they  are  called.     We  some- 
times wonder  from  what  sky  they  fall.     It  is  the  very 
error  of  the  position  of  our  lodging;  its  horoscopy 
was  ill  calculated,  being  just  situate  in  a  medium  — 
a  plaguy  suburban  mid- space  —  fitted  to  catch  idlers 
from  town  or  country.     We  are  older  than  we  were, 
and  age  is  easily  put  out  of  its  way.     We  have  fewer 
sands  in  our  glass  to  reckon  upon,  and  we  cannot 
brook  to  see  them  drop  in  endlessly  succeeding  im- 
pertinences.    At  our  time  of  Hfe,  to  be  alone  some- 
times is  as  needful  as  sleep.     It  is  the  refreshing  sleep 
of  the  day.     The  growing  infirmities  of  age  manifest 
themselves  in  nothing  more  strongly,  than  in  an  in- 
veterate dislike  of  interruption.     The  thing  which  we 
are  doing,  we  wish  to  be  permitted  to  do.     We  have 
neither  much  knowledge  nor  devices ;  but  there  are 
fewer  in  the  place  to  which  we  hasten.     We  are  not 
willingly  put  out  of  our  way,  even  at  a  game  of  nine- 
pins.    While  youth  was,  we   had  vast  reversions  in 
time  future;  we  are  reduced  to  a  present  pittance, 
and  obliged  to  economise  in  that  article.     We  bleed 
away  our  moments  now  as  hardly  as  our  ducats.     We 
cannot  bear  to  have  our  thin  wardrobe  eaten  and 
fretted  into  by  moths.     We  are  willing  to  barter  our 
good   time  with   a  friend,  who  gives  us  in  exchange 
his  own.     Herein  is  the  distinction  between  the  gen- 


POPULAR   FALLACIES.  23  I 

uine  guest  and  the  visitant.  This  latter  takes  your 
good  time,  and  gives  you  his  bad  in  exchange  The 
guest  is  domestic  to  you  as  your  good  cat,  or  house- 
hold bird;  the  visitant  is  your  fly,  that  flaps  in  at 
your  window,  and  out  again,  leaving  nothing  but  a 
sense  of  disturbance,  and  victuals  spoiled.  The  infe- 
rior functions  of  life  begin  to  move  heavily.  We 
cannot  concoct  our  food  with  interruptions.  Our 
chief  meal,  to  be  nutritive,  must  be  solitary.  With 
difficulty  we  can  eat  before  a  guest ;  and  never  under- 
stood what  the  relish  of  pubUc  feasting  meant.  Meats 
have  no  sapor,  nor  digestion  fair  play,  in  a  crowd. 
The  unexpected  coming  in  of  a  visitant  stops  the 
machine.  There  is  a  punctual  generation  who  time 
their  calls  to  the  precise  commencement  of  your 
dining-hour  —  not  to  eat  —  but  to  see  you  eat.  Our 
knife  and  fork  drop  instinctively,  and  we  feel  that  we 
have  swallowed  our  latest  morsel.  Others  again  show 
their  genius,  as  we  have  said,  in  knocking  the  moment 
you  have  just  sat  down  to  a  book.  They  have  a 
peculiar  compassionating  sneer,  with  which  they 
*•  hope  that  they  do  not  interrupt  your  studies." 
Though  they  flutter  off  the  next  moment,  to  carry 
their  impertinences  to  the  nearest  student  that  they 
can  call  their  friend,  the  tone  of  the  book  is  spoiled ; 
we  shut  the  leaves,  and,  with  Dante's  lovers,  read  no 
more  that  day.  It  were  well  if  the  effect  of  intrusion 
were  simply  co-extensive  with  its  presence ;    but  it 


232  POPULAR   FALLACIES. 

mars  all  the  good  hours  afterwards.  These  scratches 
in  appearance  leave  an  orifice  that  closes  not  hastily. 
"  It  is  a  prostitution  of  the  bravery  of  friendship," 
says  worthy  Bishop  Taylor,  "  to  spend  it  upon  imper- 
tinent people,  who  are,  it  may  be,  loads  to  their  fami- 
lies, but  can  never  ease  my  loads."  This  is  the  secret 
of  their  gaddings,  their  visits,  and  morning  calls.  They 
too  have  homes,  which  are  —  no  homes. 

XIII. 

THAT  YOU  MUST  LOVE  ME,  AND  LOVE  MY  DOG. 

"  Good  sir,  or  madam,  as  it  may  be  —  we  most  wil- 
lingly embrace  the  offer  of  your  friendship.  We  long 
have  known  your  excellent  qualities.  We  have  wished 
to  have  you  nearer  to  us ;  to  hold  you  within  the  very 
innermost  fold  of  our  heart.  We  can  have  no  reserve 
towards  a  person  of  your  open  and  noble  nature.  The 
frankness  of  your  humour  suits  us  exactly.  We  have 
been  long  looking  for  such  a  friend.  Quick  —  let  us 
disburthen  our  troubles  into  each  other's  bosom  —  let 
us  make  our  single  joy  shine  by  reduplication  —  But 
yap^  yap,  yap  /  —  what  is  this  confounded  cur  ?  he 
has  fastened  his  tooth,  which  is  none  of  the  bluntest, 
just  in  the  fleshy  part  of  my  leg." 

"  It  is  my  dog,  sir.  You  must  love  him  for  my 
sake.     Here,  Test  —  Test  —  Test !  " 

"  But  he  has  bitten  me." 


POPULAR  FALLACIES.  233 

"  Ay,  that  he  is  apt  to  do,  till  you  are  better  ac- 
quainted with  him.  I  have  had  him  three  years.  He 
never  bites  me." 

K?/,  yapy  yap  !  —  "  He  is  at  it  again." 

"  Oh,  sir,  you  must  not  kick  him.  He  does  not 
like  to  be  kicked.  I  expect  my  dog  to  be  treated 
with  all  the  respect  due  to  myself." 

"  But  do  you  always  take  him  out  with  you,  when 
you  go  a  friendship- hunting?" 

"  Invariably.  'T  is  the  sweetest,  prettiest,  best- 
conditioned  animal.  I  call  him  my  test — the  touch- 
stone by  which  I  try  a  friend.  No  one  can  properly 
be  said  to  love  me,  who  does  not  love  him." 

"  Excuse  us,  dear  sir  —  or  madam  aforesaid  —  if 
upon  further  consideration  we  are  obliged  to  decHne 
the  otherwise  invaluable  offer  of  your  friendship. 
We  do  not  like  dogs." 

"Mighty  well,  sir  —  you  know  the  conditions  — 
you  may  have  worse  offers.     Come  along.  Test." 

The  above  dialogue  is  not  so  imaginary,  but>  that, 
in  the  intercourse  of  life,  we  have  had  frequent  occa- 
sions of  breaking  off  an  agreeable  intimacy  by  reason 
of  these  canine  appendages.  They  do  not  always 
come  in  the  shape  of  dogs ;  they  sometimes  wear  the 
more  plausible  and  human  character  of  kinsfolk,  near 
acquaintances,  my  friend's  friend,  his  partner,  his 
wife,  or  his  children.  We  could  never  yet  form  a 
friendship  —  not  to   speak  of  more  delicate    corre- 


234  POPULAR   FALLACIES. 

spondences  —  however  much  to  our  taste,  without  the 
intervention  of  some  third  anomaly,  some  impertinent 
clog  affixed  to  the  relation  —  the  understood  dog  in 
the  proverb.  The  good  things  of  life  are  not  to  be 
had  singly,  but  come  to  us  with  a  mixture ;  like  a 
schoolboy's  holiday,  with  a  task  affixed  to  the  tail  of 
it.  What  a  delightful  companion  is  ****,  if  he  did 
not  always  bring  his  tall  cousin  with  him  !  He  seems 
to  grow  with  him ;  like  some  of  those  double  births, 
which  we  remember  to  have  read  of  with  such 
wonder  and  delight  in  the  old "  Athenian  Oracle," 
where  Swift  commenced  author  by  writing  Pindaric 
Odes  (what  a  beginning  for  him  !)  upon  Sir  William 
Temple.  There  is  the  picture  of  the  brother,  with 
the  little  brother  peeping  out  at  his  shoulder;  a 
species  of  fraternity,  which  we  have  no  name  of  kin 
close  enough  to  comprehend.  When  ****  comes, 
poking  in  his  head  and  shoulders  into  your  room,  as 
if  to  feel  his  entry,  you  think,  surely  you  have  now 
got  him  to  yourself — what  a  three  hours'  chat  we 
shall  have  !  —  but,  ever  in  the  haunch  of  him,  and 
before  his  diffident  body  is  well  disclosed  in  your 
apartment,  appears  the  haunting  shadow  of  the  cousin, 
over-peering  his  modest  kinsman,  and  sure  to  overlay 
the  expected  good  talk  with  his  insufferable  procerity 
of  stature,  and  uncorresponding  dwarfishness  of  obser- 
vation. Misfortunes  seldom  come  alone.  'T  is  hard 
when    a  blessing    comes  accompanied.      Cannot  we 


POPULAR    FALLACIES.  235 

like  Sempronia,  without  sitting  down  to  chess  with 
her  eternal  brother?  or  know  Sulpicia,  without  know- 
ing all  the  round  of  her  card-playing  relations  ?  must 
my  friend's  brethren  of  necessity  be  mine  also?  must 
we  be  hand  and  glove  with  Dick  Selby  the  parson,  or 
Jack  Selby  the  calico  printer,  because  W.  S.,  who  is 
neither,  but  a  ripe  wit  and  a  critic,  has  the  misfortune 
to  claim  a  common  parentage  with  them?  Let  him 
lay  down  his  brothers ;  and  't  is  odds  but  we  will  cast 
him  in  a  pair  of  our's  (we  have  a  superflux)  to  balance 
the  concession.  Let  F.  H.  lay  down  his  garrulous 
uncle ;  and  Honorius  dismiss  his  vapid  wife,  and 
superfluous  establishment  of  six  boys  —  things  be- 
tween boy  and  manhood  —  too  ripe  for  play,  too  raw 
for  conversation  —  that  come  in,  impudently  staring 
their  father's  old  friend  out  of  countenance ;  and  will 
neither  aid,  nor  let  alone,  the  conference  :  that  we 
may  once  more  meet  upon  equal  terms,  as  we  were 
wont  to  do  in  the  disengaged  state  of  bachelorhood. 

It  is  well  if  your  friend,  or  mistress,  be  content 
with  these  canicular  probations.  Few  young  ladies 
but  in  this  sense  keep  a  dog.  But  when  Rutilia 
hounds  at  you  her  tiger  aunt ;  or  Ruspina  expects 
you  to  cherish  and  fondle  her  viper  sister,  whom  she 
has  preposterously  taken  into  her  bosom,  to  try  sting- 
ing conclusions  upon  your  constancy ;  they  must  not 
complain  if  the  house  be  rather  thin  of  suitors.  Scylla 
must  have  broken  off  many  excellent  matches  in  her 


236  POPULAR  FALLACIES. 

time,  if  she  insisted  upon  all,  that  loved  her,  loving 
her  dogs  also. 

An  excellent  story  to  this  moral  is  told  of  Merry, 
of  Delia  Cruscan  memory.  In  tender  youth,  he  loved 
and  courted  a  modest  appanage  to  the  Opera,  in 
truth  a  dancer,  who  had  won  him  by  the  artless  con- 
trast between  her  manners  and  situation.  She  seemed 
to  him  a  native  violet,  that  had  been  transplanted  by 
some  rude  accident  into  that  exotic  and  artificial 
hotbed.  Nor,  in  truth,  was  she  less  genuine  and  sin- 
cere than  she  appeared  to  him.  He  wooed  and  won 
this  flower.  Only  for  appearance'  sake,  and  for  due 
honour  to  the  bride's  relations,  she  craved  that  she 
might  have  the  attendance  of  her  friends  and  kindred 
at  the  approaching  solemnity.  The  request  was  too 
amiable  not  to  be  conceded;  and  in  this  solicitude 
for  conciliating  the  good  will  of  mere  relations,  he 
found  a  presage  of  her  superior  attentions  to  himself, 
when  the  golden  shaft  should  have  "  killed  the  flock 
of  all  affections  else."  The  morning  came ;  and  at 
the  Star  and  Garter,  Richmond  —  the  place  appointed 
for  the  breakfasting  —  accompanied  with  one  English 
friend,  he  impatiently  awaited  what  reinforcements 
the  bride  should  bring  to  grace  the  ceremony.  A  rich 
muster  she  had  made.  They  came  in  six  coaches  — 
the  whole  corps  du  ballet  —  French,  Italian,  men  and 
women.  Monsieur  De  B.,  the  famous  pirouetter  of 
the   day,  led   his  fair  spouse,  but  craggy,  from  the 


POPULAR   FALLACIES.  237 

banks  of  the  Seine.  The  Prima  Donna  had  sent  her 
excuse.  But  the  first  and  second  Buffa  were  there ; 
and  Signer  Sc — ,  and  Signora  Ch  — ,  and  Madame 
V  — ,  with  a  countless  cavalcade  besides  of  chorusers, 
figurantes,  at  the  sight  of  whom  Merry  afterwards  de- 
clared, that  "  then  for  the  first  time  it  struck  him 
seriously,  that  he  was  about  to  marry  —  a  dancer." 
But  there  was  no  help  for  it.  Besides,  it  was  her  day ; 
these  were,  in  fact,  her  friends  and  kinsfolk.  The 
assemblage,  though  whimsical,  was  all  very  natural. 
But  when  the  bride  —  handing  out  of  the  last  coach 
a  still  more  extraordinary  figure  than  the  rest  —  pre- 
sented to  him  as  hti  father  —  the  gentleman  that  was 
to  give  her  away  —  no  less  a  person  than  Signor  Del- 
pini  himself — with  a  sort  of  pride,  as  much  as  to 
say.  See  what  I  have  brought  to  do  us  honour  !  —  the 
thought  of  so  extraordinary  a  paternity  quite  overcame 
him ;  and  slipping  away  under  some  pretence  from 
the  bride  and  her  motley  adherents,  poor  Merry  took 
horse  from  the  back  yard  to  the  nearest  sea-coast,  from 
which,  shipping  himself  to  America,  he  shortly  after 
consoled  himself  with  a  more  congenial  match  in  the 
person  of  Miss  Brunton  ;  relieved  from  his  intended 
clown  father,  and  a  bevy  of  painted  Buffas  for 
bridemaids. 


238  POPULAR   FALLACIES. 

XIV. 

THAT   WE   SHOULD   RISE   WITH   THE   LARK. 

At  what  precise  minute  that  little  airy  musician  doffs 
his  night  gear,  and  prepares  to  tune  up  his  unsea- 
sonable matins,  we  are  not  naturalists  enough  to  deter- 
mine. But  for  a  mere  human  gentleman  —  that  has 
no  orchestra  business  to  call  him  from  his  warm  bed 
to  such  preposterous  exercises  —  we  take  ten,  or  half 
after  ten  (eleven,  of  course,  during  this  Christmas 
solstice),  to  be  the  very  earUest  hour,  at  which  he 
can  begin  to  think  of  abandoning  his  pillow.  To 
think  of  it,  we  say ;  for  to  do  it  in  earnest,  requires 
another  half  hour's  good  consideration.  Not  but 
there  are  pretty  sun- risings,  as  we  are  told,  and  such 
like  gawds,  abroad  in  the  world,  in  summer  time  es- 
pecially, some  hours  before  what  we  have  assigned ; 
which  a  gentleman  may  see,  as  they  say,  only  for  get- 
ting up.  But,  having  been  tempted  once  or  twice, 
in  earlier  life,  to  assist  at  those  ceremonies,  we  confess 
our  curiosity  abated.  We  are  no  longer  ambitious  of 
being  the  sun's  courtiers,  to  attend  at  his  morning 
levees.  We  hold  the  good  hours  of  the  dawn  too 
sacred  to  waste  them  upon  such  observances ;  which 
have  in  them,  besides,  something  Pagan  and  Persic. 


POPULAR   FALLACIES.  239 

To  say  truth,  we  never  anticipated  our  usual  hour,  or 
got  up  with  the  sun  (as  'tis  called),  to  go  a  journey, 
or  upon  a  foolish  whole  day's  pleasuring,  but  we 
suffered  for  it  all  the  long  hours  after  in  listlessness 
and  headachs ;  Nature  herself  sufficiently  declaring 
her  sense  of  our  presumption,  in  aspiring  to  regulate 
our  frail  waking  courses  by  the  measures  of  that  celes- 
tial and  sleepless  traveller.  We  deny  not  that  there 
is  something  sprightly  and  vigorous,  at  the  outset  es- 
pecially, in  these  break-of-day  excursions.  It  is 
flattering  to  get  the  start  of  a  lazy  world ;  to  conquer 
death  by  proxy  in  his  image.  But  the  seeds  of  sleep 
and  mortality  are  in  us ;  and  we  pay  usually  in  strange 
qualms,  before  night  falls,  the  penalty  of  the  unnatural 
inversion.  Therefore,  while  the  busy  part  of  man- 
kind are  fast  huddling  on  their  clothes,  are  already 
up  and  about  their  occupations,  content  to  have 
swallowed  their  sleep  by  wholesale ;  we  choose  to 
linger  a-bed,  and  digest  our  dreams.  It  is  the  very 
time  to  recombine  the  wandering  images,  which  night 
in  a  confused  mass  presented ;  to  snatch  them  from 
forgetfulness ;  to  shape,  and  mould  them.  Some 
people  have  no  good  of  their  dreams.  Like  fast 
feeders,  they  gulp  them  too  grossly,  to  taste  them 
curiously.  We  love  to  chew  the  cud  of  a  foregone 
vision :  to  collect  the  scattered  rays  of  a  brighter 
phantasm,  or  act  over  again,  with  firmer  nerves,  the 
sadder  nocturnal   tragedies ;  to  drag  into  day-light  a 


240  POPULAR   FALLACIES. 

struggling  and  half- vanishing  night- mare ;  to  handle 
and  examine  the  terrors,  or  the  airy  solaces.  We 
have  too  much  respect  for  these  spiritual  communi- 
cations, to  let  them  go  so  lightly.  We  are  not  so 
stupid,  or  so  careless,  as  that  Imperial  forgetter  of  his 
dreams,  that  we  should  need  a  seer  to  remind  us  of  the 
form  of  them.  They  seem  to  us  to  have  as  much  sig- 
nificance as  our  waking  concerns  ;  or  rather  to  import 
us  more  nearly,  as  more  nearly  we  approach  by  years 
to  the  shadowy  world,  whither  we  are  hastening.  We 
have  shaken  hands  with  the  world's  business ;  we 
have  done  with  it ;  we  have  discharged  ourself  of  it. 
Why  should  we  get  up?  we  have  neither  suit  to 
solicit,  nor  affairs  to  manage.  The  drama  has  shut 
in  upon  us  at  the  fourth  act.  We  have  nothing  here 
to  expect,  but  in  a  short  time  a  sick  bed,  and  a  dis- 
missal. We  delight  to  anticipate  death  by  such 
shadows  as  night  affords.  We  are  already  half  ac- 
quainted with  ghosts.  We  were  never  much  in  the 
world.  Disappointment  early  struck  a  dark  veil  be- 
tween us  and  its  dazzling  illusions.  Our  spirits 
showed  grey  before  our  hairs.  The  mighty  changes 
of  the  world  already  appear  as  but  the  vain  stuff  out 
of  which  dramas  are  composed.  We  have  asked  no 
more  of  life  than  what  the  mimic  images  in  play- 
houses present  us  with.  Even  those  types  have 
waxed  fainter.  Our  clock  appears  to  have  struck. 
We  are  superannuated.     In  this  dearth  of  mundane 


POPULAR  FALLACIES.  24I 

satisfaction,  we  contract  politic  alliances  with  shadows. 
It  is  good  to  have  friends  at  court.  The  abstracted 
media  of  dreams  seem  no  ill  introduction  to  that 
spiritual  presence,  upon  which,  in  no  long  time,  we 
expect  to  be  thrown.  We  are  trying  to  know  a  little 
of  the  usages  of  that  colony ;  to  learn  the  language, 
and  the  faces  we  shall  meet  with  there,  that  we  may 
be  the  less  awkward  at  our  first  coming  among  them. 
We  willingly  call  a  phantom  our  fellow,  as  knowing 
we  shall  soon  be  of  their  dark  companionship. 
Therefore,  we  cherish  dreams.  We  try  to  spell  in 
them  the  alphabet  of  the  invisible  world ;  and  think 
we  know  already,  how  it  shall  be  with  us.  Those 
uncouth  shapes,  which,  while  we  clung  to  flesh  and 
blood,  affrighted  us,  have  become  familiar.  We  feel 
attenuated  into  their  meagre  essences,  and  have  given 
the  hand  of  half-way  approach  to  incorporeal  being. 
We  once  thought  life  to  be  something;  but  it  has 
unaccountably  fallen  from  us  before  its  time.  There- 
fore we  choose  to  dally  with  visions.  The  sun  has 
no  purposes  of  ours  to  light  us  to.  Why  should  we 
get  up? 


XV. 


THAT   WE    SHOULD    LIE    DOWN   WITH    THE   LAMB. 

We  could  never  quite  understand  the  philosophy  of 

this  arrangement,  or  the  wisdom  of  our  ancestors  in 

16 


242  POPULAR   FALLACIES. 

sending  us  for  instruction  to  these  woolly  bedfellows. 
A  sheep,  when  it  is  dark,  has  nothing  to  do  but  to 
shut  his  silly  eyes,  and  sleep  if  he  can.  Man  found 
out  long  sixes.  —  Hail  candle-light !  without  dispar- 
agement to  sun  or  moon,  the  kindliest  luminary  of 
the  three  —  if  we  may  not  rather  style  thee  their 
radiant  deputy,  mild  viceroy  of  the  moon  !  —  We 
love  to  read,  talk,  sit  silent,  eat,  drink,  sleep,  by 
candle-light.  They  are  everybody's  sun  and  moon. 
This  is  our  peculiar  and  household  planet.  Want- 
ing it,  what  savage  unsocial  nights  must  our  ancestors 
have  spent,  wintering  in  caves  and  unillumined  fast- 
nesses !  They  must  have  lain  about  and  grumbled 
at  one  another  in  the  dark.  What  repartees  could 
have  passed,  when  you  must  have  felt  about  for  a 
smile,  and  handled  a  neighbour's  cheek  to  be  sure  that 
he  understood  it?  This  accounts  for  the  seriousness 
of  the  elder  poetry.  It  has  a  sombre  cast  (try  Hesiod 
or  Ossian),  derived  from  the  tradition  of  those  unlan- 
tern'd  nights.  Jokes  came  in  with  candles.  We 
wonder  how  they  saw  to  pick  up  a  pin,  if  they  had 
any.  How  did  they  sup  ?  what  a  melange  of  chance 
carving  they  must  have  made  of  it !  —  here  one  had 
got  a  leg  of  a  goat,  when  he  wanted  a  horse's  shoulder 
—  there  another  had  dipt  his  scooped  palm  in  a  kid- 
skin  of  wild  honey,  when  he  meditated  right  mare's 
milk.  There  is  neither  good  eating  nor  drinking  in 
fresco.     Who,  even  in  these  civiUsed  times,  has  never 


POPULAR   FALLACIES.  243 

experienced  this,  when  at  some  economic  table  he 
has  commenced  dining  after  dusk,  and  waited  for  the 
flavour  till  the  lights  came?  The  senses  absolutely 
give  and  take  reciprocally.  Can  you  tell  pork  from  veal 
in  the  dark?  or  distinguish  Sherris  from  pure  Malaga? 
Take  away  the  candle  from  the  smoking  man ;  by  the 
glimmering  of  the  left  ashes,  he  knows  that  he  is  still 
smoking,  but  he  knows  it  only  by  an  inference ;  till 
the  restored  light,  coming  in  aid  of  the  olfactories, 
reveals  to  both  senses  the  full  aroma.  Then  how  he 
redoubles  his  puffs  !  how  he  burnishes  !  —  There  is 
absolutely  no  such  thing  as  reading,  but  by  a  candle. 
We  have  tried  the  affectation  of  a  book  at  noon-day 
in  gardens,  and  in  sultry  arbours ;  but  it  was  labour 
thrown  away.  Those  gay  motes  in  the  beam  come 
about  you,  hovering  and  teazing,  like  so  many  coquets, 
that  will  have  you  all  to  their  self,  and  are  jealous  of 
your  abstractions.  By  the  midnight  taper,  the  writer 
digests  his  meditations  By  the  same  light,  we  must 
approach  to  their  perusal,  if  we  would  catch  the 
flame,  the  odour.  It  is  a  mockery,  all  that  is  re- 
ported of  the  influential  Phoebus.  No  true  poem 
ever  owed  its  birth  to  the  sun's  light.  They  are 
abstracted  works  — 

**  Things  that  were  born,  when  none  but  the  still  night, 
And  his  dumb  candle,  saw  his  pinching  throes." 

Marry,  daylight  —  daylight  might  furnish  the  images, 
the  crude   material;   but  for  the  fine  shapings,   the 


244  POPULAR    FALLACIES. 

true  turning  and  filing  (as  mine  author  hath  it),  they 
must  be  content  to  hold  their  inspiration  of  the 
candle.  The  mild  internal  light,  that  reveals  them, 
like  fires  on  the  domestic  hearth,  goes  out  in  the  sun- 
shine. Night  and  silence  call  out  the  starry  fancies. 
Milton's  Morning  Hymn  on  Paradise,  we  would  hold 
a  good  wager,  was  penned  at  midnight ;  and  Taylor's 
richer  description  of  a  sun-rise  smells  decidedly  of 
the  taper.  Even  ourself,  in  these  our  humbler  lucu- 
brations, tune  our  best  measured  cadences  (Prose  has 
her  cadences)  not  unfrequently  to  the  charm  of  the 
drowsier  watchman,  *'  blessing  the  doors ;  "  or  the 
wild  sweep  of  winds  at  midnight.  Even  now  a  loftier 
speculation  than  we  have  yet  attempted,  courts  our 
endeavours.  We  would  indite  something  about  the 
Solar  System.  — Betty^  bring  the  candles. 


XVI. 

THAT   A   SULKY   TEMPER   IS   A   MISFORTUNE. 

We  grant  that  it  is,  and  a  very  serious  one  —  to  a 
man's  friends,  and  to  all  that  have  to  do  with  him ; 
but  whether  the  condition  of  the  man  himself  is  so 
much  to  be  deplored,  may  admit  of  a  question.  We 
can  speak  a  little  to  it,  being  ourself  but  lately  re- 
covered —  we  whisper  it  in  confidence,  reader  —  out 
of  a  long  and  desperate  fit  of  the  sullens.     Was  the 


POPULAR   FALLACIES.  245 

cure  a  blessing?  The  conviction  which  wrought  it, 
came  too  clearly  to  leave  a  scruple  of  the  fanciful 
injuries  —  for  they  were  mere  fancies  —  which  had 
provoked  the  humour.  But  the  humour  itself  was  too 
self-pleasing,  while  it  lasted  —  we  know  how  bare  we 
lay  ourself  in  the  confession  —  to  be  abandoned  all 
at  once  with  the  grounds  of  it.  We  still  brood  over 
wrongs  which  we  know  to  have  been  imaginary ;  and 

for  our  old  acquaintance,  N ,  whom  we  find  to 

have  been  a  truer  friend  than  we  took  him  for,  we 
substitute  some  phantom  —  a  Caius  or  a  Titius  —  as 
like  him  as  we  dare  to  form  it,  to  wreak  our  yet  un- 
satisfied resentments  on.  It  is  mortifying  to  fall  at 
once  from  the  pinnacle  of  neglect ;  to  forego  the  idea 
of  having  been  ill-used  and  contumaciously  treated 
by  an  old  friend.  The  first  thing  to  aggrandise  a 
man  in  his  own  conceit,  is  to  conceive  of  himself  as 
neglected.  There  let  him  fix  if  he  can.  To  unde- 
ceive him  is  to  deprive  him  of  the  most  tickling  mor- 
sel within  the  range  of  self-complacency.  No  flattery 
can  come  near  it.  Happy  is  he  who  suspects  his 
friend  of  an  injustice  ;  but  supremely  blest,  who  thinks 
all  his  friends  in  a  conspiracy  to  depress  and  under- 
value him.  There  is  a  pleasure  (we  sing  not  to  the 
profane)  far  beyond  the  reach  of  all  that  the  world 
counts  joy  —  a  deep,  enduring  satisfaction  in  the 
depths,  where  the  superficial  seek  it  not,  of  discontent. 
Were  we  to  recite  one  half  of  this  mystery,  which  we 


246  POPULAR   FALLACIES. 

were  let  into  by  our  late  dissatisfaction,  all  the  world 
would  be  in  love  with  disrespect ;  we  should  wear  a 
slight  for  a  bracelet,  and  neglects  and  contumacies 
would  be  the  only  matter  for  courtship.  Unlike  to 
that  mysterious  book  in  the  Apocalypse,  the  study  of 
this  mystery  is  unpalatable  only  in  the  commence- 
ment. The  first  sting  of  a  suspicion  is  grievous ;  but 
wait  —  out  of  that  wound,  which  to  flesh  and  blood 
seemed  so  difficult,  there  is  balm  and  honey  to  be 
extracted.  Your  friend  passed  you  on  such  or  such  a 
day,  —  having  in  his  company  one  that  you  conceived 
worse  than  ambiguously  disposed  towards  you,  — 
passed  you  in  the  street  without  notice.  To  be  sure 
he  is  something  short-sighted ;  and  it  was  in  your  power 
to  have  accosted  hitjt.  But  facts  and  sane  inferences 
are  trifles  to  a  true  adept  in  the  science  of  dissatis- 
faction.    He  must  have  seen  you ;  and  S ,  who 

was  with  him,  must  have  been  the  cause  of  the  con- 
tempt. It  galls  you,  and  well  it  may.  But  have 
patience.  Go  home,  and  make  the  worst  of  it,  and 
you  are  a  made  man  from  this  time.  Shut  yourself 
up,  and  —  rejecting,  as  an  enemy  to  your  peace,  every 
whispering  suggestion  that  but  insinuates  there  may 
be  a  mistake  —  reflect  seriously  upon  the  many  lesser 
instances  which  you  had  begun  to  perceive,  in  proof 
of  your  friend's  disaflection  towards  you.  None  of 
them  singly  was  much  to  the  purpose,  but  the  aggre- 
gate weight  is  positive;  and  you  have  this  last  affront 

I 


POPULAR   FALLACIES.  247 

to  clench  them.  Thus  far  the  process  is  anything 
but  agreeable.  But  now  to  your  relief  comes  in  the 
comparative  faculty.  You  conjure  up  all  the  kind 
feelings  you  have  had  for  your  friend ;  what  you 
have  been  to  him,  and  what  you  would  have  been 
to  him,  if  he  would  have  suffered  you ;  how  you  de- 
fended him  in  this  or  that  place;  and  his  good 
name  —  his  literary  reputation,  and  so  forth,  was 
always  dearer  to  you  than  your  own  !  Your  heart, 
spite  of  itself,  yearns  towards  him.  You  could  weep 
tears  of  blood  but  for  a  restraining  pride.  How  say 
you?  do  you  not  yet  begin  to  apprehend  a  comfort? 
some  allay  of  sweetness  in  the  bitter  waters?  Stop 
not  here,  nor  penuriously  cheat  yourself  of  your  rever- 
sions. You  are  on  vantage  ground.  Enlarge  your 
speculations,  and  take  in  the  rest  of  your  friends,  as 
a  spark  kindles  more  sparks.  Was  there  one  among 
them,  who  has  not  to  you  proved  hollow,  false,  slippery 
as  water?  Begin  to  think  that  the  relation  itself  is 
inconsistent  with  mortality.  That  the  very  idea  of 
friendship,  with  its  component  parts,  as  honour, 
fidelity,  steadiness,  exists  but  in  your  single  bosom. 
Image  yourself  to  yourself,  as  the  only  possible  friend 
in  a  world  incapable  of  that  communion.  Now  the 
gloom  thickens.  The  little  star  of  self-love  twinkles, 
that  is  to  encourage  you  through  deeper  glooms  than 
this.  You  are  not  yet  at  the  half  point  of  your  eleva- 
tion.    You  are  not  yet,  believe  me,  half  sulky  enough. 


)Vew  fiction 


Cbc  King's  Rencbtnan.  A  chronicle  of  the  sixteenth 
Century.  Brought  to  light  and  edited  by  William 
Henry  Johnson.    i2mo.    Cloth,  extra,  gilt  top.    $1.50. 

What  is  more  noticeable  than  the  interest  of  the  story  itself  is  Mr.  John- 
son's intuitive  insight  and  thorough  understanding  of  the  pencd.  While  the  book 
is  Weyman  in  vigorous  activity,  it  is  Dumas  in  its  brilliant  touches  of  romanti- 
cism. —  Boston  Herald. 

Mr.  Johnson  has  caught  the  spirit  of  the  period,  and  has  painted  in  Henry 
of  Navarre  a  truthful  and  memorable  historical  portrait. —  TIu  Mail  and  Express 
of  Ntiv  York. 

X\k  Duenna  of  a  Genius.    By  M.  E.  Francis  (Mrs. 

Francis  BlundelJ),  author  of  *'  In  a  North  Country  Vil- 
lage," "A  Daughter  of  the  Soil,"  etc.  i2mo.  Cloth, 
extra,  gilt  top.     $1.50. 

An  admirable  novel ;  a  pure,  bright,  pleasant,  sparkling,  wholesome,  inter- 
esting story  of  musical  taste,  talent,  and  life.  The  idea  is  a  oeautiful  one  itself, 
and  it  is  well  carried  out  in  the  structure  of  the  story.  —Literary  World. 

A  novel  that  does  n't  sound  a  hackneyed  note  from  beginning  to  end.  .  .  . 
One  of  the  brightest,  happiest,  and  most  infectious  of  the  numerous  stories  that 
have  a  musical  basis.  —  Boston  Herald. 

Freshly  told  and  charmingly  conceived.  Very  delightful  reading,  and,  in 
these  hurried  and  high-strung  days,  a  genuine  refreshment.  —  Boston  Transcript. 

"Cbc  Count's  8nuff-B0X.  A  Romance  of  Washington 
and  Buzzard's  Bay  during  the  War  of  181 2.  By  George 
R.  R.  Rivers,  author  of  "The  Governor's  Garden," 
"Captain  Shays,  a  Populist  of  1786,"  etc.  Illustrated 
by  Clyde  O.  De  Land.     i2mo.     Cloth,  gilt  too.     $1.50. 

A  well-conceived  and  well-told  story,  from  which  the  reader  wilrget  an  excel- 
lent idea  of  society  and  manners  in  the  nation's  capitsd  nearly  a  century  ago.  — 
Boston  Transcript. 

Will  rank  as  one  of  the  successes  of  the  year  if  there  is  any  faith  to  be  put 
in  a  capital  story  in  a  frame  fashioned  of  our  own  rugged  history. — Denver 
Republican. 

6acb  Life  dnfulfiUed.  By  Anna  Chapin  Ray,  author 
of  "Teddy,  Her  Book,"  etc.  i6mo.  Cloth,  extra. 
$1.25. 

A  novel  of  to-day,  dealing  with  American  life.  Its  principal  charactars 
are  a  young  girl  studying  for  a  musical  career,  and  an  author.  The  scenes 
of  the  »*.ory  are  laid  in  a  Western  summer  resort  and  in  New  York. 

I 


na99aif«    H  ftotnance  of  palcsttne*    By  Henry 

GiLLMAN.     Crown  8vo.     600  pages.     Cloth,  gilt  top. 

$2.00. 

The  author  of  this  powerful  romance  lived  in  Palestine  for  over  five 
years,  and  during  his  residence  there  had  unusual  and  peculiar  advantages 
for  seeing  and  knowing  the  people  and  the  country,  enabling  him  to  enrich 
his  story  with  local  color,  characteristics,  and  information  not  found  in  any 
other  work  of  the  kind  on  the  Holy  Land.  The  p»n-portraits  of  the  people 
are  studies  made  upon  the  spot,  and  the  descriptions  of  Jerusalem  and 
*he  surrounding  country  are  word-pictures  of  the  land  as  it  is  to-day,  and 
therefore  of  special  value. 

A  biblical,  patriarchal,  pastoral  spirit  pervades  it.  Indeed,  the  whole  book 
is  saturated  with  the  author's  reverence  for  the  Holy  Land,  its  legends,  tradi- 
tions, glory,  misery,  —  its  romance,  in  a  word,  and  its  one  supreme  glory,  the  im- 
press of  the  Chosen  of  God  and  of  the  Master  who  walked  among  them. —  The 
Independent. 

Mr.  Gillman  has  certainly  opened  up  a  new  field  of  fiction.  The  book  is  a 
marvel  of  power,  acute  insight,  and  clever  manipulation  of  thoroughly  grounded 
truths.  _  There  is  no  question  that  it  lives  and  breathes.  The  story  is  as  much  of 
a  giant  in  fiction  as  its  hero  is  among  men.  —  Boston  Herald. 

The  impression  made  by  reading  the  book  is  like  that  of  witnessing  a  great 
play,  its  scenes  are  so  vivid,  its  characters  so  real,  its  surrounding  horizon  so 
picturesque,  its  setting  so  rich  and  varied.  —  Philadelphia  Item. 

Stelanha:  a  forest  picture,  and  Other  Stories. 

By  Henryk  Sienkiewicz,  author  of  "  Quo  Vadis," 
"With  Fire  and  Sword,"  etc.  Translated  from  the 
Polish  by  Jeremiah  Curtin.  Uniform  with  the  other 
volumes  of  the  Library  Edition  of  Sienkiewicz.  Crown 
8vo.     $2.00. 

This  new  volume  by  the  most  popular  writer  of  the  time  includes  the 
shorter  stories  which  have  not  before  been  published  in  the  uniform  Library 
Edition,  rendering  it  the  only  complete  edition  of  his  works  in  English. 
It  comprises  six  hundred  pages,  and  contains  the  following  stories,  dramas, 
etc.  :  Sielanka,  a  Forest  Picture ;  For  Bread ;  Orso  ;  Whose  Fault,  a  Dra- 
matic Picture  in  One  Act ;  On  a  Single  Card,  a  Play  in  Five  Acts ;  The 
Decision  of  Zeus ;  Yanko  the  Musician ;  Bartek  the  Victor ;  Across  the 
Plains ;  The  Diary  of  a  Tutor  in  Poznan  ;  The  Lighthouse  Keeper  of 
Aspinwall ;  Yamyol  (Angel);  The  Bull  Fight;  A  Comedy  of  Errors;  A 
Journey  to  Athens  ;  Zola. 

Under  the  seventeen  titles  one  finds  almost  as  many  aspects  of  the  genius  of 
Sienkiewicz.  Detached  from  the  intricacies  of  an  elaborate  composition,  figures, 
scenes,  and  episodes  become  far  more  effective.  —  New  York  Times. 

In  TaitI*    By  Henryk  Sienkiewicz.    Translated  from 
the  Polish  by  Jeremiah  Curtin.     i6mo.    Cloth,  extra. 

$1.25. 

A  love  story  of  modern  Poland,  by  the  author  of  "  Quo  Vadis,"  not 
before  translated.  The  scene  is  laid  at  Kieff,  and  university  life  there  is 
described. 

a 


ITbe  Story  of  Gosta  Bcrling*  Translated  from  the 
Swedish  of  Selma  LagerlOf,  by  Pauline  Bancroft 
Flach.     i2mo.     Cloth,  gilt.     |i.75- 

When  "Gosta  Berling"  was  first  published  in  Sweden  a  few  years 
ago,  Miss  Lagerlof  immediately  rose  into  prominence,  and,  as  Mr.  E. 
Nesbit  Bain  writes  in  the  October  "  Cosmopolis,"  "  took  the  Swedish 
public  by  storm." 

The  sagalike  treatment  and  almost  lyric  mood  of  "  The  Story  of  Gosta 
Berling  "  render  its  form  in  keeping  with  the  unusual  character  of  the  book 
itself.  The  harshness  of  Northern  manners  enables  Miss  Lagerlof  to 
probe  human  life  to  its  depths  ;  and  with  the  effect  of  increasing  the  weird 
power  of  the  whole,  a  convincing  truth  to  nature  is  intermingled  with  the 
wild  legends  and  folk-lore  of  Varmland. 

There  is  hardly  a  page  that  does  not  glow  with  strange  beauty,  so  that  the 
book  exerts  an  unbroken  charm  from  beginning  to  end.  —  The  Bookman. 

Something  Homeric  in  its  epic  simplicity  runs  through  the  history  of  the 
deposed  priest.  The  opening  chapters  engage  the  attention  at  once  by  their 
mystic  realism.  —  Time  and  the  Hour. 

I  am  the  King.  Being  the  Account  of  some  Happenings 
in  the  Life  of  Godfrey  de  Bersac,  Crusader  Knight  By 
Sheppard  Stevens.     i6mo.     Cloth,  extra.     $1.25. 

a  fresh  and  invigorating  piece  of  reading.  —  Nashville  A  merican. 

Characterized  by  those  graceful  touches  which  belong  to  true  and  pure 
romanticism.  —  Boston  Herald. 

It  has  the  straightforwardness  of  the  old-time  story-teller.  —  St.  Louis 
Globe-Democrat. 

XJbc  Duhe'9  Servants*     H  Romance*    By  Sidney 

Herbert  Burchell,  author  of  "  In  the  Days  of  King 
James."     i2mo.     Cloth,  extra.     $1.50. 

A  highly  successful  romance,  of  general  interest  and  of  creditable  workman- 
ship, —  London  Athenceum, 

pastor  IVaudic'a  '^oung  XSXxit.  By  ^douard  Rod. 
Translated  from  the  French  by  Bradley  Oilman. 
i2mo.     Cloth.     $1.25. 

M.  Rod's  new  novel  is  a  study  of  French  Protestantism,  and  its  scene 
is  laid  in  La  Rochelle  and  Montauban,  the  two  Huguenot  strongholds.  It 
was  first  pubhshed  in  the  "  Revue  des  Deux  Mondes,"  and  at  once  achieved 
success.  "M.  Rod's  work,"  says  Edmund  Gosse  in  the  "  Contemporary 
Review,"  "whether  in  criticism  or  fiction,  always  demands  attention." 
*'  The  Catholics,"  says  a  writer  in  "  Literature,"  "  praise  the  book  because 
they  find  in  it  arguments  against  their  adversaries ;  the  Protestants,  while 
protesting  that  the  author,  because  he  writes  in  the  clerical  Gaulois,  is  none 
of  theirs,  read  it  to  discover  personal  allusions  to  their  spiritual  guides." 

1 


"Cbc  Kinabip  of  Souls.    H  Narrative.    By  Reueh 

Thomas.     i2mo.     Cloth,  extra.     $1.50. 

The  author  of  this  work  is  well  known  through  his  connection  with 
the  ministry.  The  volume  gives  an  account  of  a  trip  made  by  a  philo- 
sophical professor,  his  intellectual  daughter,  and  a  young  theological  stu- 
dent, including  descriptions  of  various  portions  of  England  and  Germany 
visited  by  the  persons  of  the  narrative.  The  undogmatic  way  in  which  the 
author  discusses  theology  and  philosophy  will  interest  the  serious-minded. 

King  or  Knave,  ^hicb  ^in9  ?  An  old  Tale  of  Hugue- 
not Days.  Edited  by  William  Henry  Johnson. 
i2mo.     Cloth,  extra.     $1.50. 

This  is  a  sequel  to  the  author's  successful  romance  of  the  time  of 
Henry  of  Navarre,  entitled  "The  King's  Henchman."  Much  of  its  in- 
terest centres  in  the  personality  of  the  famous  Gabrielle  d'Estr^es  and  the 
efforts  of  Henry  of  Navarre  to  obtain  possession  of  the  throne  of  France. 

Xbe  ]Miracle9  of  Hnticbrist.    By  Selma  Lagerlof. 

Author  of  "  The  Story  of  Gosta  Berling."  Translated 
from  the  Swedish  by  Pauline  Bancroft  Flach. 
i2mo.     Cloth,  extra.     $1.50. 

This  second  important  work  from  the  pen  of  the  successful  author  of 
"  Grosta  Berling,"  which  has  created  such  a  strong  impression,  will  be 
widely  read.  "The  author."  says  a  reviewer  in  "  Cosmopolis,"  "has 
chosen  the  Etna  region  of  Sicily  as  the  theatre  of  her  story,  and  the  result  is 
a  masterpiece  of  the  highest  order, — a  chef-d'oeuvre  which  places  the 
young  author  in  the  front  rank  of  the  literary  artists  of  her  day.  The 
merits  of  '  Antekrists  Mirakler '  are  so  superlative  that  a  lesser  eulogy 
would  be  inadequate.  ...  It  is  worth  while  to  learn  Swedish  to  read  this 
astonishing  book.  All  who  hunger  after  true  poetry  may  here  eat,  drink, 
and  be  satisfied." 

H  Boy  in  the  peninsular  TJXxr.  The  Services,  Adven- 
tures, and  Experiences  of  Robert  Blakeney,  a  Subaltern 
in  the  28th  Regiment.  An  Autobiography.  Edited  by 
Julian  Sturgis.  With  a  map.  8vo.  Cloth,  gilt  top. 
$4.00. 
In  the  pages  of  this  book  will  be  found  a  spirited  picture  of  an 

English  soldier's  life  during  the  Peninsular  War,  with  the  allied  armies 

against  Napoleon's  generals. 


LITTLE,  BROWN,  &  COMPANY,  Publishers 

254  Washington  Street,  Boston,  Mass. 


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